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The Amazing Mazer - A New Poem by Ben

Starlight by Streetlight

October is tinted green, blue, violet, tan,
to accommodate the pedestrian,
who leaves the starlight of the city's windows,
to wander past the shops that evenings close,
on his way home, beneath the roaring el,
where leaves swirl in the air, this side of hell.
A million visages, a million words,
of advertising copy, conversations
heard in the street, or heard in railway stations,
invade the heart, informing its desire
for privacy, for lying in the dark,
and emanating magically higher,
up through the tinted light, the falling leaves,
high up past violet Venus's lone spark,
where moonlight settles on the snow-white eves
of certain quaint restrictions, four mute walls,
the in between state of the darkened halls:
to say, I'm mine. I am the one I am.
Let Archimedes fall on swift, dull Priam.
Let stars be rockets, stir audible Tyre.
The glittering mastodon is all for hire,
and Jesus speaks, and Franklin, and Rousseau,
illuminated there, with piercing echo.
Spread out across the vagrant orchard trees,
the cellar that the spider only sees,
with apple smells, an Indian Summer breeze,
alerts the senses, lone in supposition
of ecstasy in very high position.
But Dante goes. The orange trees are too real,
to hope exemplify the nuptial peal
of separate strangers, who align in tenses,
past tick tock clocks that time the sleeping senses.
The morning shall stand proud, lit in the hall,
or huddling on street corners, clutching bundles,
a brokerage of lassitude and thrall,
of portraits on a terra cotta wall,
beside the phone that rings and shakes the candy,
the pencils and the paper that are handy.
The day is jubilant, and all are free,
to ice skate in the park, or sit beneath a tree,
although we meet back here for lunch at three.
Never mind that dinner is at seven,
or that each one aspires to his own heaven.
Let darkness gather round the radio;
let each feel all, but tell not what they know.
The world war has begun. Just so. Just so.
 
poem by Ben Mazer copyright 2013; published with permission of the author.
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