(After “Once Fifth Avenue” by Bryan “Ruck” DeLae) The universe doesn’t care about a tower— old Flatiron—sinking in a wilderness of sand that wraps you like a boa. (An hour was all it took for men to make this mess.) Balancing on the knife edge of a dune, we find ourselves transfixed by an edifice that lists like a riddled barque. Late afternoon sun warms your limestone skin. We reminisce, peering into your chambers, each depicting a chapter from the days of civilization, reflections from your windowpanes inflicting both grief and rapture. You, the incarnation of all three-sided structures, have been waiting for a little flock of pilgrims. Cool and calm as cumuli—though dunes keep strangulating your skeleton—you’re thrilled that we have come. Your gargoyles glower. Aieeec! Such hideous faces! We answer them with ones far more abhorrent, then scramble down a drift as it erases all traces of your torso. In the torrent, the cherubs on the roof, no longer smiling, panic and leap into the blowing heaps, drowning in them as they keep on piling and piling up in a gale that never sleeps. Winds, whipping your weathered pillars, wail like sirens. The sand assaults your broad hypotenuse, our coats, our hats, our eyes. The bleak environs go postal—like a thousand fiends turned loose. The leafy trees of Madison Square Park, plays, cafés and jazz, the brownstone where Teddy Roosevelt was born—now all are dark beneath this desert. Crumbled. Beyond repair. No bands of boys now gather to partake in innocent up-skirting as the skirts of ladies rise; no constables will shake apart their fun, though the hurricane still hurts. And, as the universe is torn asunder and, as our dreams of triangles break in two and, as your monumental head goes under, Manhattan’s ghosts cry: “23 skiddoo!” ______ NOTES The Flatiron building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatiron_Building “23 skiddoo”: a hasty departure. “Broad hypotenuse”: The Flatiron building is in the shape of a right triangle. In fact, it is a special kind of right triangle called a Pythagorean triple, the sides being 5, 12, 13. Wind: Due to the geography of the site, with Broadway on one side, Fifth Avenue on the other, and the open expanse of Madison Square and the park in front of it, the wind currents around the building could be treacherous. Wind from the north would split around the building, downdrafts from above and updrafts from the vaulted area under the street would combine to make the wind unpredictable.[60] This is said to have given rise to the phrase "23 skidoo", from what policemen would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts. —Wikipedia