1980 Broadway Poem
After some aborted attempts at painting uptown (doormen up there can be vicious), I did this piece. I’ve always been fascinated by how stuff gets stuck in the warm asphalt in the summertime. Keys, bottle caps, shiny bits of colored glass, it reminded me of ancient artifacts petrified in lava—like urban fossils. After a couple of weeks these letters sank into the pavement and disappeared. I sometimes wonder if they’re still there.
I hammered about 50 words into the asphalt on Broadway from 96th street to the Battery. At the time I was interested in DuChamp and William Burroughs and their experiments allowing chance to determine the outcome of their work. Without keeping track,without self-critical intervention, I inscribed a long poem down Broadway. The finished poem has been lost, but I recall it was a lot less interesting than the single word images themselves.
