The POEMobile dreams of peace.

Zeitlin, Steve

The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) is bumper to bumper. Up in the cab of the POEMobile, I can see a clear and beautiful view of nighttime Manhattan on my left, but curving ahead for miles along this crazy, twisted excuse for a highway, traffic is at a standstill. I'm returning home from the POEMobile's celebration for the Muslim holiday of Eid at Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, Queens.

The POEMobile is a magnificent, brightly painted, poem-bedecked art truck with painted iron wings arching above its roof and poems in a two dozen languages emblazoned on its side--beneath which hides a dilapidated 1988 Chevy Step Van, which could conk out at any moment.

The name POEMobile is inscribed in cut metal above the cab above the Pablo Neruda line:

   Llego lapoesla a buscarme / Poetry came in
   search of me.

The POEMobile, sponsored by Bowery Arts + Science and City Lore, projects poems onto walls and buildings in tandem with live readings and musical performances in neighborhoods in New York. As poets perform in their native languages from the street or plaza, the words float above their heads, often several stories high. The projections open with an animated, feathered wing brushing words onto the building, inspired by a Martin Espada line: "God must be an owl, electricity coursing through the hollow bones, a white wing brushing the building."

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With the POEMobile stuck in a classic late night New York City traffic jam standstill, my mind wanders back to our recent programs--a Russian/Ukrainian Yevgeny Yevtushenko tribute on the Bowery; a Persian Norooz/ New Year celebration in DUMBO, and both a Korean and a Chinese New Year celebration in and around Flushing Town Hall in Queens. Specially designed software enables poems in their original language to morph into English and vice versa. The community experiences the impact of the poetry in their spoken tongue, while the English-speaking visitors and neighbors grasp the deep poetic experiences of the foreign language poets they live among.

As traffic inches forward, one car length at a time, my mind muses on this guerilla poetry, set up in diverse urban neighborhoods, creating momentary beauty in words and music and light, and traveling under the radar of both news outlets and, for the most part, the authorities.

Under the radar. This contraption travels under the radar. That's what sparked the traffic-induced dream....

World War III breaks out, and the aides are under attack from all fronts. The crew of the POEMobile is out of work, as all funding for the arts has been summarily axed. The new AXIS powers of Iran, Iraq, Korea, China, and Russia move to take over the world. It's a scene right out of a cheesy Hollywood movie. The Allied powers are on the verge of collapse. Our Nighthawks, Raptors, and drones can't penetrate their missik defense systems. Our counterattacks are continually repelled.

Hey," I say to mypartner in crime, the poet Bob Holman, director of Bowery Arts + Science. "Remember? This thing flies under the radar."

Without warning, jet engines appear on the POEMobile's iron wings, and this crazy contraption takes flight. Bob adjusts his helmet, electricity coursing through his veins.

First stop, the peace rally in Washington Square. We need CJ, our projection maven. We find him fiddling with a projector lens inside a DUMBO warehouse where an Occupy War peace rally is forming.

"CJ--get in here--we're flying out--bring the projector--we need 100,000 lumens NOW!

Next, we need Fletcher. Where is she? Getting ready to read her poems at the KGB bar in the East Village. We text her, only to hear back, "But I'm reading my Superwomen poem cycle next."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"Bring 'em with you."

"What do you need me for?"

"Navigation."

"Ah, a little program planning."

"We need peace poems from the Korean, Russian, Persian, and Chinese POEMobile presentations." 'Got, it Chief. I guess the POEMobile programs sought to create understanding with some of the same groups we're fighting now. Ironic, huh?"

The POEMobile careens in a flurry of colors and painted metal, feathered wings down into the capital-cities of the Axis powers. "Head for the downtown between the tall buildings."

The brightly colored poetry bird careens and zigzags between the skyscrapers of the apocalypse, a white wing brushing the buildings. Hovering outside a downtown Baghdad skyscraper window, CJ lowers the projector into place. Perched on the Steadicam, the projector casts a beam of poetry on to the wall. The Baghdad audience gathers and grows, stands transfixed by poetry and peace larger than life. A tank rolls in--the POEMobile darts around one corner after another, towards the people, going wherever peaceniks gather. Cast on a building in downtown Baghdad, the words of Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967), translated by Farzaneh Milani:

   Kus olur, sen ucusu hatirla / Remember flight,
   the bird is mortal

Then in Moscow, on the walls of the Hermitage, through a bevy of aircraft fire, CJ steadies his baby. Words of a Yevtushenko poem three stories high on a wall:

   I am
      each old man
        here shot dead.

   I am
      every child
        here shot dead.

Unnoticed by the foreign news departments, shoulder-to-air missiles explode far above us, the crazy copter dodging the skyscrapers of power.

In Beijing, suddenly, we crisscross a corner and project onto the walls of the Forbidden City an ancient Chinese peace poem:

   If there is light in the soul,
   There will be beauty in the person.
   If there is beauty in the person,
   There will be harmony in the house.
   If there is harmony in the house,
   There will be order in the nation.
   If there is order in the nation,
   There will be peace in the world.

The people cheer.

Suddenly, on both sides of the busy street, the tanks hone in on our position--the bigguns roar, the air awash in missiles. They strike time in its inexorable flight---for the POEMobile remains in midair, motionless, the projector still castingpoems of peace onto the walk and buildings of the enemies. Whether the projections brought peace to the world or the POEMobile was blown out of the sky remains a blur....

The BQE, on the other hand, starts to move. The tractor-trailer wreckage has been removed. The POEMobile is moving again, beautiful, sublime, projecting a narrow beam of light under the radar, back here at home where we need it.

Steve Zeitlin is the founding director of City Lore in New York City. Photo by Martha Cooper.