Per Contra Spring 2009 Light Verse

Per Contra Spring 2009 Light Verse Supplement

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Russell Bittner

There Are No Larks on Broadway

There are no larks on Broadway

singing love songs to the mews,

as every backstreet pigeon knows

that Reuters rifts the news.

The province once of winos

swigging rot-gut by the fifth

now pays to Disney tribute and

to Providence, His myth.

The buskers who would serenade

its sidewalks for a dime

have paved the way for hucksters

hawking ads that almost rhyme.

Pornographers, whose ‘pliant art’

drew clients from the ‘burbs,

have left Times Square to cater to

a far less violent urge –

where money is the music

and receipts are all the rage,

“the play is (not) the thing”

that sage accountants like to stage.

Instead, we have a Square – no square –

and clocks that pimp the time;

like Vegas, we’re a monument

to Mammon’s crimpy crime.

Clouds

Clouds have passions, just like us –

drifting off to board a bus,

each of us anonymous –

clouds have passions, just like us.

Clouds will let their passions rain

even on a Spanish plain.

Where’s the fun if we abstain?

Rousingly with John Coltrane.

Clouds may let their passions ride

even into “nimbicide.”

Bottled up and kept inside,

ours feel like formaldehyde.

Clouds have passions, just like us:

some of them eponymous,

and yet not synonymous

Clouds have passions, just like us.

Russell Bittner has published his poetry and prose in many journals. Both his fiction and poetry have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in, among others, The Lyric, Thieves Jargon, Per Contra, The International Journal of Erotica, Next Stop Hollywood: Short Stories Bound for the Screen (St. Martins, 2007). He is presently at work on two additional novels, Gigolo, Gigolina and My Cradle, My Crucible, as well as on a collection of short stories, The Dead Don’t Bitch.