Sidewalk Poetry

                There’s a new

practice in my neighborhood. When there’s sewer work, causing
                sidewalks to be
replaced, people often stamp poems into the drying cement.
                I don’t know
if there’s a city-sanctioned method of doing this, but
                it’s done neatly,
with clear block-lettered words impressed in the
                new sidewalk squares.

(A crabby neighbor once called the city to have
                a square replaced
after a girl scratched an unauthorized poem on it
                with a stick.)

                Many establishment poets
dislike the sidewalk poetry. I myself –
                hardly an established
writer – have a supercilious, superior
                attitude toward it.

                Anyway, as I
turn up Laurel, past Mr. Green’s house, I come to the first poem,
                titled Second Lover –

                He kissed the girl
                in the ballerina skirt.
                It was a long one –
                like the kiss –
                drenching her sneakers
                in tulle.

Pretty racy! Maybe the city should
                have censored it.
I thought that “long one” referred to the kiss all along, but it turns out to refer to
                the ballerina skirt.
Ballerina skirts can definitely be long and made of “tulle” (one of
                those poetic words).
Sneakers with the tulle skirt is a nice touch, though. And
                the long kiss,
drenching the girl’s sneakers, is quite erotic. Walking a little farther,

                I come to –

                Tonight

                in the dark kitchen
                only the stainless steel sink
                holds the moon.

The moon must be shining in by the kitchen window.
                Only the sink
“holds” it, so its reflection is the only light
                in the kitchen.
This really does create an eerie, solitary feeling.
                I wonder, did
a teenager write it? or the woman who lives
                in the house?
Was it composed on the spot? or had it been written
                some time before
and finally chosen when the opportunity presented itself
                for sidewalk publication?
(I’ve since learned that the poems are submitted to
                a municipal office,
and those selected are installed on the sidewalks
                by construction crews;
but please let’s try to forget this
                inconvenient truth.)

                                                             Well,
here’s one from the other side of the street –

                A boy, skinny legs pale
                as peeled willow, pedals
                to his favorite pond, pole
                in hand. Years until he dates.
                He desires only slime, slop,
                the fish and frogs of his secret spot.

This one is an exercise in “p”-alliteration – until the end.
                when the “p”s
switch to “s”s. The first image makes me wince a bit, as it forces me to
                imagine a boy’s
legs as “peeled.” But the poem is onto something
                when it matches
sexual desire with ”slime, slop, the fish and frogs” of a boy’s 
                “secret spot.”

                                                    I’m 

                already getting a
little tired of jotting these poems down, when I
                come to a
stretch around Laurel and Pierce, where I enter a veritable
                sidewalk-poem village –

                       Wet-cement
                       opportunity.
                  It only takes a second
                to change this spot forever.

and

                        Origami bird,

                You have great long wings to fly.
                         Why do you sit still?

and

                          A puddle

                          where a moth
                       can shake the sky

After these haiku-like poems,
                it’s a relief
to encounter this more robust effort, titled Interloper –

                On a delicate pappus you rose.
                Alighted on the turf, seeming benign,
                Locked into bedrock with pointed toes
                Stretched lemon head to the sun.
                Hydra, you dodge the mower blade.
                I whack you with a spade for fun.
                Fine! Senseless to fret.
                I’ll transmute gold locks into wine
                And eat your children with vinaigrette.

The speaker is evidently a kind of ogre, whacking
                and devouring beautiful,
delicate flowers “for fun." I guess the first image works OK –
                a dandelion before
it opens is a green bundle, kind of like a “pappus.” I’m troubled
                by “Alighted on
the turf,” though, except that we know that dandelion seeds do alight and
                then sprout roots,
fastening themselves down, even into bedrock. Nice
                rhyme scheme too –
the poem isn’t unskillful – I don’t know about the appropriateness
                of “toes,” but
it does rhyme with “rose,” – also “wine”-”benign,” “fret”-”vinaigrette,”
                and “sun”-”fun.”
There’s a somewhat brutal ambivalence about these brazen weeds –
                like my ambivalence
about the poems themselves, which actually seem to improve somewhat the more 
                I study them.

                There’s a lot
more, but enough’s enough. There are no poems on my block of Ashland,
                but just around
the corner, on Fairview, this one is stamped – the last I’ll quote –

                    A little less war
                A little more peace
                    A little less poor
                A little more eats

The Friends communion has its meeting house just three blocks away,
                on Grand Ave.
Although this part of St. Paul is very much a Roman Catholic community,
                the sidewalk poems
have a stubborn dissenterly feel – made by people who try to take
                their own account
of the events transpiring in the vernacular of their lives.
                And they prove
that, however it  may fare elsewhere, poetry is alive
                (and – well – alive) 
in my part of south-
                western St. Paul