Coney Island’s Last Stand

No tickets were ever taken here
At the end of the Q line
Where prostitutes split in two from the pressure
Of choosing a new way to lose.
All rides keep you going in circles
Or heading up wards until you hit your peak
Then heads straight down
Passed the turn style into the concrete heart of the animal of consumption
(where the mole people can dig no further)
bloodied fingers beat against
Bleached walls
Void of graffiti
Or a past which is not of New York
But is New York
Whose architects know nothing of the garbage heaps
Or the paupers graves
For here both are the same for the human wreckage.

The side show fancies are swallowed into the
The brown snow soul of the East Coast
And melts into the carnival's last gleaming.

2

The new Indians stand against the on coming tide that comes to wash them out of
Shared bathrooms like the aborted flow of ghosts of the SROs
Or the Saints of the Dexter House
That learned the art of night diving
onto the reservations of Queens
Or washed into the waters of the Hudson down 
Onto the shores of Coney Island
Among the tapestry of news papers
Used condoms
Syringes
Right into the eye of the storm of human waste.
To be buried into the last lights of the peoples pa