An Ode to the Neighborhood

In honor of the city which I am visiting, tonight I post a poem about another city I lived in, Philadelphia. My partner and I often joke about how Philadelphia, and a particular neighborhood in West Philadelphia, is our ancestral homeland. We say this for a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that there we had the best sense of community and connectedness that we've experienced in our adult lives. It's hard to be away from it, though the choices we have made are the right ones.

I wrote this sestina in 2008, just after we moved away from the neighborhood. We moved away because I was following a job that made it possible for me to farm and get paid, a rare and good thing. But even though the choices were right, the missing was, and is real. Here's an ode to the neighborhood. I still miss you, West Philly.

An Ode to the Neighborhood, 2008

Monday mornings at the Satellite

café before I ever fell for a punk

kale smoothie or found a job, anarchist

dreams stirred my mocha. Green

monsters struck discordant rhyme, bicycles

flew over potholes at break-neck speed, and I was in love.

I'd never lived in a place that loved

you back. Other cities were a distant satellite

orbiting around the hot center of my longing. I'd bike

through Boston, Newark, Providence, feeling like a punk

in straight clothing, seeking out the green

center of life seething anarchic

hope—and find myself in endless pseudo-anarchist

meetings, hamstrung consensus blocked by love

less egos. Less radical activists in the Green

Party dedicated to their navels saw justice as a satellite

to their central passion—themselves. But here, punk

meets crunch, hipster meets play, and we're all bikers

we're all known to each other. Late night bicycle

posses take over our tree streets. Anarchist

collectives hash out their truths in  post-punk

movement organizing calling for a greater love

than capitalist competition. We know we're satellite

to the mainstream. We like it that way. Our greening

newness recreates itself with each attempt to coax green

life from brownfield, from abandoned row house. We build bicycles

from scrap, gardens from abandoned lots. We take the satellite

decay and breathe new life through concentric anarchy—

no gods, no government, each guided to each through love

of life splitting open all codes, all masters, all punk

odes and pacifist leanings lost in the world punked,

pushed aside for the inevitable twine of green

vine around the filthy palimpsest of blasted out blocks. With love,

you build something new. Neighborhoods with bicycle

collectives, food co-ops with wings, anarchist

meeting spaces, urban farms, and satellite

lives orbit the greater satellite of our punk longings—

for endless green on broken city streets, for anarchist rhyme to play on

low power radio stations, and for love to ride on a fixed gear bike down the hallowed halls of West Philadelphia.