Central Park

Blank verse poem about the seedy side of a beloved NYC landmark that was created to emulate a natural setting about as genuine as Disneyland.

Author's Note: Some readers may find the language and imagery disturbing. This poem, along with my poem The Subway, provide a dark vision of what lays beneath the veneer of glamor in New York City that tourists and casual observers often miss. Both poems were written when I was 18-19 years old. Alas, the city has fallen back to the bad old days once again. I could have written this yesterday (albeit Pepsi cans no longer rust thanks to their aluminum rather than steel).

Central Park

Flowers bloom next to rusting Pepsi cans,

Watered by the spit of cocaine dealers,
And the semen and vaginal fluid,
Of hot lovers groping under blankets,
Under stars dimly blinking through thick smog.

Nightly haven for muggers, rapists, fiends,
Whose every breath profanes the species they,
So poorly represent, turning Plato’s,
Featherless bipeds, to dead plucked chickens,
Soul-less, pointless wastes of protoplasm.

Abomination-- not in itself but,
For the use it’s put to: a bone for dogs,
Who’ve never tasted steak, and are gleeful,
To feast upon the scraps of fetid meat,
Clinging to well-gnawed bones that they are fed.

Central Park, the bone we are to chew while,
Smiling complacently at skyscrapers,
Daily rising where wild flowers might have grown,
Our humanity proportionally,
Shrinking inversely to their daily rise.

If I seem narrow minded and unkind,
Or blind to the beauty of Central Park,
It is because I’ve stood on virgin ground,
In summer, fall, winter and early spring,

And cannot bring myself to love a w***e.