LOVE PARK

(photo by AMP for Wiki Take Philadelphia project, 10/14/2009)


(Philadelphia’s JFK Plaza, with Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE sculpture added in 1976 to celebrate the Bicentennial)


To visit this spot in your hometown
Is somewhat unsettling. Again,
You see
The letters of the word LOVE
Stacked into a square, the V
Lopsided, the fountain –
With its water sometimes tinted
To promote something-or-other –
The skate-boarders,
And the junkies,
But no lovers
Going public with affection;
The most well-known public incident
Caused by a coupling here
Was not sex but
A stabbing, when one homeless woman
Killed another who she thought
Wanted her boyfriend.
The park is not a monument
To Love, but to the tendencies
Of cities.

At least the letters
Are red as spilled blood; that much
Suits the danger
Of the situation. Often, unmedicated
Crazy folks may scream about apocalypse
And fill the air with messages of fear.
It makes you wonder
Whether FEAR’s the word
That should have been
Immortalized in steel.

You remember
Bringing your bagged lunches
Here when the sculpture
Was new, when the word LOVE seemed
A bit more like it might belong here.
Traffic continues
To circle the spot,
In a flow daily events
Don’t interrupt.

This same sculpture sits
In other public places,
Spread out all across
The planet,
But the feeling
Its name drops
Is more elusive –
An abstraction
(NOT in the artistic sense).

-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey


All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.

GUTTER SAILORS

Streets run like water
Spilled on the world,
Streaming
In bright sunlight, hissing
On the way.

Street kids play
With paper boats
That float in gutters,
Catching them
Before they reach
The sewer, unafraid
Of cars
Or germs.

But unlocking
The fire hydrant
Is a crime. Hide
The magic wrench,
or it might get confiscated
By the cops!

Sadly, it isn’t safe
To play at the real river,
Only half a block away.
The cops find
Bodies
Floating there.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey

All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.



Yeah, I know. "Morbid" ending, right? I refuse the label "morbid" because it implies it's inappropriate to write (or even think) about certain subjects. Growing up in the city, we were all aware that playing in the streets had an element of danger. And the river -- the Delaware, which flowed right behind my house -- was even more unsafe. If we had forgotten this, we might not be here today.

But by the way, there was originally a "Mary Sunshine" version of the poem, with this additional stanza at the end:

All the more reason
For defiance,
For just grabbing
Any shred of joy
You can.

Fellow poets advised me to edit it out, which felt right to me. I guess we're all "morbid!"