#HowlWrites Featuring Bob Holman

July 26, 2017

Howl Happening features a new writer each month for the #HowlWrites series. Today we are excited to present Bob Holman’s “Grandly and Centrally”.

“Grandly and Centrally” was commissioned by the MTA for a centennial reading at Grand Central station. Bob Holman is a native New Yorker from Kentucky currently living over the Bowery Poetry Club, which he founded in 2002. He’s written seventeen books, made several films about poetry and endangered languages, and serves on the board of Howl Arts Inc. Getting into the writing business can be a long journey, but if you have the right tools and are persistent, you will achieve. Finding an agent to help you with that is important, knowing how to write a query letter to get them interested in you is your first step.

 

 

Grandly and Centrally

Grandly! and Centrally!

Locally universally

Typically cryptically

Prototriumphantly

You come here to go there

Literally everywhere

Hip trippin Flip floatin

No me-and-ering

Grandly! and Centrally!

Methodically centrifugally

Take you where ya wanna be

Multidirectional simultaneity

Zipping Higgs bosun, reality’s gluon

The station sits formidably. Maddeningly. Meddlesomely.

The ratchety manifest. The voluminous steamer chest.

The rivets and pivots and divots of rush

A trip to the seashore-Picnic-In-A-Box

Pickles, gefilte fish, a schmear and some lox

Fried chicken, varenykys, collards and grits

Hot dogs and frogs legs — don’t dish the dish

Tamales, pasteles,

Spaghetti and gravy

Call in the Navy!

More hot sauce and quick

And the goat’s still unroasted

And the bagel’s untoasted

And the toddler is gurgling glee

At the constellation ceiling

The gods still are stealing

Glances at humans as they

Bump dodge careen

You cross time with space, cross space with time

Just so you can rhyme “sublime” with “sublime”

And the blizzardin’ tickets keep fallin’ from Outer Outer space

And Sun Ra is smiling through the Conductor’s face

And this glorious moment can’t keep up with the human race

Cause yr waltzing in Grand Central with the Love of yr Life

A single accordion is playing yr life

The moment is stuck and recycles again

Just because it stops doesn’t mean that it ends

So keep lining up, Chumps

Facebook the rumps

Lined up before you

In sweltering clumps

Maybe this is your stop

Maybe this is where it ends

Someone passes you getting on

For them it begins

For you’re going Somewhere.

Somehow. Sometime.

And the place you will land

You don’t know with whom you will dine

But some Strega, Picayunes,

And a ghost on the dunes

Your family’s tunes

They toast randomly

For it’s Grandly, so Grandly

And everso Centrally

Let’s call it a Century!

Grand Central Station!

 

 

Are you a writer working or living in the Lower East Side / East Village? Do you want to be considered for the #HowlWrites feature? Email [email protected] for more info!

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