Epistle to Tacoma

Tacoma
in your sorry streets
I gave up
on my few remaining scraps
of the commercialized
American Dream.
Tacoma
demonic metal hurdles high
& chemical smell rises
suffusing grey stink.
Asthmatics worsen & eyes puff.
The wheeze of children &
greed of unpolished men.
If only our statesmen read Marcus Aurelius.
Tacoma
how I cried my eyes out
in your basements.
My grief bottomed out
in the folds of your wasted hem.
Your men said I looked
like Christopher Walken.
Your women said I looked
like James Spader.
Some of your women cried at me
telling me 'everything.'
Said how approachable I was.
Stories of former drug addiction,
weight problems, eating disorders,
bad ex's, prostitution,
faulty parenting,
& how they felt about me.
I didn't take advantage of them.
Some glint-stared & giggled.
Tacoma
I didn't have a dime.
It bothered me at the time.
Tacoma
your women are battered then fried.
They improve to despair.
They use sexiness
to invite you to boring churches.
Only one of them I loved
in a special way.
We sat talking in the park
near the greenhouse which boils
& the manuscript museum.
Her fine feet in thong sandles
released to enjoy clovered grass
in the moist shade.
We talked about how we felt.
I was so stilted & philosophical
in the defensive unable to speak.
Tacoma!
The way she moved her hand
to tuck her dress
when she sat down.
We walked to our cafe.
Our bodies close.
Birds & cherry blossoms
played befour our feet.
The sway of her hip,
moles on her arms & light wisps of hair,
the presence of those eyes & lips
that spoke.
Tacoma
it's easy to miss what you never had.
Tacoma
what is the world doing?
When is the capitalist nightmare
going to end?
Tacoma
I moved with a job lined up
that quickly fell through.
The kitchen crew
with their poor English, polite mannerisms,
& mischievous grins were friends
but the owner thought five bucks
was a night's worth of tips.
I fell to questioning nooses on your streets
to find my laugh.
This wasn't what Jefferson had in mind.
The minority in opinion
came here to start a new world.
Peasants & Puritans,
the enslaved & indentured.
Chinese pilgrims track-tied to washing.
Africans turned slave chained to cotton.
Women alotted sufferage.
We had forefathers
that broke the first 398 treaties
with the native peoples.
What sap flowed through their veins?
What a trail of tears.
This wasn't what Jefferson had in mind.
Tacoma
I threw freight in your port.
Thanks for noticing.
What putrid water.
The rusty rail cars pulled scraping up.
Gas fumes & dust hit us.
Our gloved hands jammed fingers
but still we flew in a sweat-haze.
Tacoma
I became a man in your brutal grasp.
Tacoma
I the laborer for minimum wage.
Tacoma
I the basement dweller trying to sleep
three inches above concrete
part dormant, quasi-admiring sorority girls.
Tacoma
standing long in front of each piece
I the art-viewer
spouting mine on streetcorners & stages.
Mayfield riffs delicate & sultry
behind my soul-bothered fountains.
Cigarette butts enshrine your alleyways.
Sad homeless men that can't tend themselves
pick your chipped paint grimy dumpsters
by the highrises of empty agendas.
Yours the chemical plant profusion.
Yours the pulp-rife collusion.
Your antique clocktower can't measure
the drudgery in your districts.
Fine houses rot, sink porches in your destitude.
No historical society unearths much humanity
that's what present moments are for.
Where is art in your malcontent?
Does poverty ever escape the crushing vice?
How much of America is like you?
Tacoma, I loved & despaired in you.
I escaped. I am a better man than that.
I am a better man than I thought I was, then in that place.
Tacoma, the women I loved altared you.
Sacrifice glints on your beers.
Tacoma, the multitude has a potentate heart.
We can reach beyond your machinery.
How your scar lives on is up to us.