Winter coats scrapped
for much colder days,
when City nights prove they deserve darkness
smashing up against street lights
abandoned on palace corners.
Corners abandoned on much colder days
amidst sweating piano keyboards
pounded into syncopation,
dog eating strings frenetic inside,
any hint of an audience surviving
iron bared below city streets.
Uptown jazz smashes down repressive soldiers,
fracturing rock piled barracks jagged,
ripping away Pentagon’s frosted deceptive windows
until the perverse fools
relinquish their pledge to murder the world,
and their prison yards spiral dark no exit
as generals line up convicted:
banished and doomed,
never to bomb their way
back out again.
1/22/81
Hunter College
NYC