Rick Leddy

Let Love

 

The city screams smoke and desperation

Drought-laden concrete sizzles hard and hot under unmerciful skies white with anger and promise

Shadows move within shadows while hidden refugees pray in converted theatre churches

Let Love Prevail

Wind-burned and sun-stroked lives

A Babel-tower of languages speaking volumes in cacophonous mix

Vendors beckon beside the mountainous and chaotic weight of the American Dream

as Mothers hide beneath ornate and rusted matinee idol overhangs

their children impossibly asleep in strollers amid

the perpetual pounding urban Sturm and Drang

Genuflecting against banshees of violence and poverty

and crying to the heavens

Let Love Prevail

Walking among the hip and hopeless

My vision burned and blurred by the searing stream of passing lives

Buildings rise and crumble

Living, dying and resurrected memories unfold

The city of a million hopes and stillborn dreams

Laid before me

My mouth dry, my lips cracked as Valkyries swarm the desert stolen city sky

My heart howls and my blood-filled ears pound

As I implore to the echoing madness and beauty

Let Love Prevail

 

Too Many

I'm walking on the Boulevard of Too Many

Too many Italian suits of specious provenance

Hanging wrinkled on browned mannikins

Too many Skittle-colored suit cases

Crammed into hurricane-induced merchandizing

Too many plastic neon Jesus sculptures

And Mother Mary votives awaiting wax-fueled Pieta moments

Too many people speaking in Babelous tongues

While those I comprehend talk only to themselves

Too many shops smelling of leather and benzene

Blaring white-noise distorted mariachi trumpets

Too many near-death flashing whiz-bang gizmos

Working on entropy an hour at a time

Too many merchants with hollow eyes

Staring longingly at rushing humanity like winter-elk kill

Too many shrink-wrapped sneakers

Guaranteed vacuum-sealed Nike freshness

Too many things to take in

Sights and smells and sounds

Rattle Puree in my brain

Floating motes here and gone

I close my eyes against the barrage

Spirits of goods like ghosts dance grey against eyelids

Where do they all go, I wonder

These too many things

Where do they go

 

Little Town

 

In the dark

At Griffins of Kinsale

Drinking slow dark Guinness

As Van Morrison resurrects ancestral memories

That resonate in Irish bones

Couples in shadows

Eyes locked with knowing smiles

Whispering secret places embraces will later unlock

Reverse Edward Hopper painting

On the Inside looking Out

My Little Town

Awnings frozen in time

Red lights flash and gates fall

The train a screeching banshee

The Pretty Blonde Waitress

Approaches and asks:

Another?

I want to say

Just wish me Happy Birthday

Then kiss me on the cheek

And I will keep a

Special place for you

Among my pedestal memories

and imagined conquests

But I do not

Because my wife called me

To tell me her father died suddenly in her arms tonight

A thousand miles away

Instead I say

I will think about it

As U2 thrums

The Edge plaintively wailing

Hold Me Now

Sadness and Hope

Vibrate within this weary Irish marrow

Like a tuning fork

I finish the ebony liquid

Feeling a shade darker

And stand

Leaving without saying a word

Never so melancholy

Yet never so glad

To be alive