Poetry

''The Spry Metropolis''



Tower, buzz and scurry (Vocabulary at end of poem)
Oh great resilient city
Ahoy!
Alive. Scramble bustle earth's
ethnicities
On lurid quests--
A pendulum of tantric turmoil and
Blessed harmony

Quixotic city--brash,
Sangfroid merotomized and
Chrematistic--metro nonpareil.

See a myriad melange of
Tortured splenetic
Souls and great spirits
Noble and soothfast

Great city, your hecatombs
Of underground trains
Roar scream in
Hodge-podge graffiti attire

Fat fuming brattling buses
Grunt their huffpuffs,
And nervous cars scissorcut
Impatiently betwixt tarred and
Cemented streets
August and capacious

Ferruminated grey glass and steel
Towers--Aeeries in obeisance to the
Heavens, erupt in anabasis at the azure
Pearly welkin,
Humming diapasons of marvelous
Melismatic tunes
A gallimaufry of cacaphony and
Sweet sounds--the
Great Metropolis persistently
Thrives.

Streets adorned with sylph fashion
Models, conute churls, street
recrement--dazed and forgotten men,
Enticing shuck and jive
Blandishing street vendors,
Natty brujo business gentry
With their helotry on a
Ferris wheel of daily
Triumphs and defeats and
Cheeky mendicants
Shuffle along allegro vivace
Howling chorus songs amidst a
Torrent of raining dollars and
Coins floating in the skies over
The brazen metropolis.

Snuffling restaurants like hives
Humbuzz the grandiloquence,
Pithy slang and sententious
Persiflage of the day.

A truly syncratic parley
Of passions sentient
Of crimes basilic
Of arts sacerdotal and gratuitous
Of fashions arabesque and outre
Of plays frivolous and profound
Of music sericeous and truculent
Of money pursuits solonic
Of loves ascendant and descentdant
Of rejections mournful and joyous

An e'er persisting cha-cha-cha and
Boogie-woogie of the fierce
Bustling bubbling bold city,
Pendulumming pandaemoniums and
Resolutions, day
Upon pertinatious day.
David John Hart 2003 USA

Vocabulary: merotimize-to divide into parts; welter-turmoil; sangfroid-extraordinary self-possession esp. under strain; chrematistic-rel. to wealth accumulation; splenetic-moody/morose/bad tempered; soothfast-true/genuine/truthful; hecatombs-many; capacious-spacious; ferruminate-to solder or join together; aeerie-nests of predatory birds/houses situated on high; anabasis-a going up or marching up; welkin-sky; diapason-bursts of harmonious sounds; melismatic- rel. to melodic embellishments or ornamentations; gallimaufry-medley/mixture/jumble; sylph-slender woman with graceful carriage; cornute-horned; churl-cranky person; recrement-leftovers; blandish- to wheedle/flatter/cajole; natty-neatly trim/spruce/smart/dapper; brujo-sorcerer/witch doctor; helotry-serfs/slaves; mendicant-n.-beggar/panhandler; allegro-mus. fast; vivace-Ital. lively; brattle-v.to rattle/clatter noislily; brash- impetuous; snuffle-v.-to breathe noisily; sententious-pithy; persiflage-frivolous banter; syncratic-blending of or combining of different things; parley-discourse; basilic-lowly/base; sentient-capable of feeling; sacerdotal-priestly; arabesque-something fanciful/ornamental; outre-out of the common limits; sericeous-silky; truculent-fierce/savage/ferocious; solonic-sweeping drastic measures; e'er-poetic-ever; pertinaceous-persistent