Alphabet City was a haven for Marxist poets
Who still remembered
Manifestos written in the sweat and tears
Of workers who still had unions
And still had voices and still had souls;
Alphabet City was a village of
Sentient beings who still looked within
For the cosmic bangs of cosmic yins and yangs
That intertwined with all the universal chimes
Ringing with universal rhymes;
Alphabet City was a cavern with Socratic actors
Lost in Greek arenas of Avenue B visions of acidic divisions
Erupting in mental barrages of soulful mirages;
Alphabet City was a carnival of human composers
Reciting Yeats and Mao and Che in
Mellifluent renditions of earthly conditions;
Alphabet City was the core of evolutionary trends
That swept away the revolutionary bends
That stifled the bodies bent over
In seismic quivers of hellish shivers;
Alphabet City were streets flooded with blue pills and red pills
And powdered shit and vials of shit that roasted on spoons
In elegant swoons of addicted babes tottering like broken limbs
In puddles of our alphabet soup.
