Baltimore, revisited

When did I become so loud?
My siren streets singing car horns and fire trucks,
passing through for the fifth time today, filling
my sea-salt air with curses and misogyny,
did it start with a whisper which turned into a shout,
crevassed between the cobblestones of Fell's Point?
did it start with my summer heat, full of
sexy and bloody death to the young men who flooded
my pointed paths?

Maybe, as winter comes, my railroad bones
will frost into snowflakes, so delicate I could taste
their sweetness on my paper tongue, maybe
as winter comes, silence will fill the void left by
gunshots and ammunition springs, leave
me to wander through my streets,
clean under the fall breeze.

Remember

memory, which can be anything you want it
to be, or nothing at all

my gay bachelors, gathered for supper,
darlings, sweeties, kisses,
have another cocktail, the best cure for
hangovers is refilling the tank, and
the one straight man (for we all bear our
crosses, they say)

my Jewish village with its crumbs, it's
coming back, the neighborhood, so
they say, it's coming back
or being made new,
 rebirth or resurrection
for the Jews?

my Washington monument is
set for repairs, my capitol says so,
$5 million for its bicentenntial, it will be ready,
and I will be pretty, and tourists will flock
to me and to local eateries, though
not like Washington, so
whitewashed in its
politik.

Remember

my soul, which
somehow, always, returns to the Inner
Harbor, remember it in the breeze
which fills sailboats, only
to leave them empty, remember
the silhouettes of words whispered in the
darkness, only lit by jellyfish waves,
which aren't really waves at all.