Bridge To Nowhere

Bridge To Nowhere
© Surazeus
2018 07 21

Because I have never been to its long streets
or wandered without purpose through its towers
I believe Manhattan is strange illusion
invented by people with cameras
to generalize every city in the world
as one great city that covers the globe.

The ghosts of immigrants crowding its dreams,
who came from every nation of the world,
dance together in the maze of its hopes
and sell each other lies of hot desire
that crumble from their hands like Autumn leaves
when they all wander mute on Brooklyn Bridge.

The poets who revealed its mysteries,
once howling on its rooftops in the rain,
are nothing more now than wind in dark alleys,
whispering secrets on windowsills of hope
where children watch sunlight gleam in raindrops
and practice vocabulary for school.

God tried to call us on the telephone
but the artist, paralyzed with despair
in his tinfoil studio with huge paintings
of celebrities, never answered it,
so he left a message no one could hear,
asking us about the apocalypse.

Wherever I go in weird Gotham City
I see perched on cathedral balustrades
the gold-eyed owl that clutches in sharp claws
the bat that tried to save mankind from crime,
so I know she wants to explain the truth
if I can figure out her weirdest clue.

I doubt that anyone has ever been
to this city called Manhattan that shines
in ten thousand towers on Island of Skulls
where the bearded wizard with broken staff
clasps handful of grass and asks me, "What is it?"
so we smoke it rolled in thin Bible pages.

Down endless labyrinth of numbered doors
I search the singing shadows of Manhattan,
leaping through memories of each shining window,
to find every poet, novelist, painter, singer,
comedian, filmmaker, sculptor, and clown
who once created visions from its eyes.

So why do I keep waking up at midnight
halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge of hope,
singing with the wind harping its taut wires,
to repeat the visions of every brain
that once lusted to taste eternity
flashing in rain that drenches bridge to nowhere?

Sitting in my living room in hot Texas
when I was a young boy in the Seventies,
I saw ten thousand movies that took place
in living rooms, offices, and cafes
of the endlessly sprawling city maze
of lost souls who gave each other new names.

Because the rest of vast America
is nothing more than suburbs of Manhattan
where storytellers write poems on brick walls,
we all must gather at the sparkling fountain
that ever flows in Washington Square Park
to sing spells while Orpheus plays glass guitar.

We walk the narrow streets of cobblestone
to find the prophet of the broken wing
who gives us water from the Well of Silence
so we can share the voices of our horror
while catching raindrops of the Rainbow Bridge
that plant strange visions in our fertile brains.

Through pouring rain of the dark night I see
Lamp of Liberty showing me the way,
so I follow golden path of the sleuth
to the abandoned church of blind Saint Mark
where lost souls gather for the feast of friends
who share poetry of their bleeding hearts.

Take my hand, all you lost souls of the world,
and walk with me on Brooklyn Bridge to Nowhere,
so we can go home to the family hearth
and feast together when the day is cold,
sharing memories we invent while we talk,
and sing the poems our laughing prophets dream.