Poetry

Mike Maguire photo

By

Michel Krug

Denunciation

Conniving near the moat

An invisible swamp

Surrounding those invited, who absorb

The brightest of lights

So after, when the House is departed,

The glow shines on

Elation that the blindest

Of trusts runneth over.

Until the circle sees on TV

The swamp being breached

And the closest,

The Papadopoulos, the Flynnius

Et tu Bannonus

Recognize the intrusion

Validate by epiphany that

Interests Diverge

And no one will

Remember what was

Said or done before

Once the denunciation

Is complete.

TriBeCa

I.

I walked the sinuous path

by the West Side Highway

Chatting with my cousin,

Admiring the riders bobbing down the bike path

On a late October weekend,

The yellows spilled on the boulevard,

Whipped up by the bicycles and

Alarmed by the horns coming from fleets of cars

Punctuated by the ferries and tugs on the green

Belly of the Hudson,

Commerce and invention intact.

You can walk for blocks on end in TriBeCa,

The flow of family traffic,

the warmth of the sun,

sailing on your back

Propelled by Manhattan itself,

I came here for the 100^th birthday of my Uncle,

Time and place, purpose and pace, I leave

After a mere weekend,

while New Yorkers embrace

Their space by the Hudson from

Battery Park, to One World Trade Center

To the Piers.

II.

I’m back, walking my own Midwestern routes,

Until I read of a devastation by another

Psychopath who rents a vehicular automatic,

Steamrolls TriBeCa in search of Americans,

Or will any world citizen suffice?

And what’s the agent to ask?

(All truck rentals fed to the FBI)?

Perhaps one of the bicyclists I’d admired

On her daily ride,

Thrilling to the immensity of the City,

And in her eyes the promise

Of culture.

A half-mile from the new WTC.

Michel Krug

Michel Krug graduated from the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University. He writes poetry and literary fiction, is a former print journalist and now practices law by day in St. Paul, MN. His poems have appeared in The Raven’s Perch, 2 Elizabeths, Poetry24, The Lilith Review, Roachprint Anthology – Thirty West, Main Street Rag, Brooklyn Review, Riverrun, Borealis, Poetry Motel and The Blind Man’s Rainbow.