The Ludlow Avenue Public Parklet

The Public Parklet mysteriously appeared

on September fourteen 2019

in front of the Marrakech Moroccan Restaurant

extending from the sidewalk out into the street 

as if it were a gift from Allah.

A noteworthy structure, hard to ignore

45 feet long, of golden knotty pine

a pleasing fresh cut wood smell.

Our neighborhood’s most colossal bench

if not the city’s or even the Tri-State’s.

Suitable for a gospel choir

a Little League softball team

the audiences for a street preacher or an anarchist

up to seven homeless youth sleeping end to end

or a ski jump platform for the skateboarders.

A new sign explains that the parklet is designed

for “people and pets to linger and connect.”

Also, “No Smoking.” 

As you might guess the community response

has been reserved, even dismissive.  

On NextDoorClifton the nay-sayers and the nit-pickers

complain that the parklet has absconded

with two treasured parking spaces.

And that it is bone-headed because it is 20 yards away from

the Clifton Plaza with its many benches, tables, seats

and its ample opportunities for lingering and connecting.

And what, anyway, is the point of a 45-foot-long bench?

(Most NextDoorClifton contributors are reputed to be crotchety.)

Personally I have been keeping my eye on the parklet.

Mostly it sustains a population of zero.

One day at 4 p.m. there were two male Indian students chuckling.

Another time two thirty-something men with long black beards

lingered though they did not seem to be connecting.

In an effort to grease the wheels

I sit at the parklet every now and then.

A young woman smiled at me the first time.

Later a middle-aged woman with a chihuahua

rested for five minutes at the opposite end.

The parklet, of course, offers more than rest.  

This very poem that you are reading

was not only inspired by but composed at the parklet.

Not the founders’ original intent

but we now have a new poetry writing venue on Ludlow Ave.

Who would have guessed?

Inner Voices/Outer Audiences

I went to hear the visiting poet 

She explained she is most herself 

When alone in a room

Alone and writing a poem

Poetry is the outlet for one’s inner voice

This public appearance, she said, means nothing 

Just a lot of flim and flam 

A put-on self that others should not trust 

To know her true self, this visitor said, read her poetry 

This sounded reasonable

For a moment

Sort of

But I wasn’t convinced

I learned a lot from her public appearance

What she looks like, how she sounds, what she laughs at

Her mannerisms, her quirks

Her enthusiasms, her antipathies

More than I got from the poems she read     

And I’m not certain that one’s inner voice 

Winds up unedited in one’s poetry

Writers, I believe, always write with an audience in mind  

Sometimes specific 

Usually more vague and general

But I doubt we are ever alone in a room

For myself, I tailor what I write to that imagined audience

Perhaps looking for acceptance or appreciation

There are many things I never say

I avoid politics and social controversies

For fear of offending this person or that

Likewise for religion, God, the afterlife 

Sex is too intimate a topic for me 

Secrets about my family

Hurtful things

I shuffle forth with the tried and true  

My inner voice, I fear, winds up rather bland

Constrained by taboos and rules of political correctness

I could, of course, write secret poems 

Just for myself 

That never see the light of day

But my in-house censor would still be busy at work 

There are countless things about myself I never want to know  

Poetics

A snappy rhyme is bound to please

It turns the whole world cheery 

Especially after wine and cheese       

I recommend it, Dearie

But rhymes, alas, are now passé 

and meter merely clogs the path  

Seek liberation, fluidity, free verse

The poet’s maxim, reject constraint

like the hummingbird flitting about the tulips 

and always bear in mind:  Century Twenty-One

we the progeny of ✯Post✯Post✯Modernism✯

plumbing dark recesses of the Unconscious

   fingernails scraping on the blackboard 

blind lambs plunging from limestone cliffs

while Time bends in upon    ) (     itself  

So many splendid options for composing a verse

But first let’s enjoy a glass of Merlot