EDITOR'S NOTE: The following poem was read at Friday's luminary by Kai Coggin, a Hot Springs poet. Coggin is a teaching artist with the Arkansas Arts Council and the author of "Periscope Heart." It is one of two pieces of poetry published today in memory of the hotel. See today's Viewpoints page for an additional tribute.
Majestic (adjective): having or showing impressive beauty or dignity
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood,
now just bricks, bent steel,
broken windows and wood.
If you squint your eyes,
you can still see her structure shadowing
in the setting sun against the pines,
a silhouetted madam that
became a temporary home
for travelers bathing in the
healing Hot Springs waters,
for baseball players
who wore Red Sox and
hiked West Mountain for training,
for Mafia crime lords
who found a peaceful respite
and called a truce in the lobby of her mahogany belly.
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood,
now just bricks, bent steel,
broken windows and wood.
I walked around the rubble
on a warm February day,
almost a year after the building
caught fire and became a memory of ash.
I wanted to see what she had become,
wallow inside her leftover bones
stand in the middle of her incendiary decimation,
a wasteland of remains underfoot,
vines grow up and around
the piles of asbestos bricks
a year after crumbling,
jagged contortions of steel spell out
the negligence of man,
there is a ladder that points up to the sky,
jutting out of her Majestic heart, reaching nowhere,
hoping for some kind of revitalization,
or at least for someone to pick her body up off the street,
this broken building, bleeding wreckage.
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood,
now just bricks, bent steel,
broken windows and wood.
A fire escape still clings to the side
of the red building,
the portion of the resort that still stands,
empty and useless,
but still stands,
the fire escape an ironic display
of what did not escape fire,
this landfill of history,
the fallen walls of so much joy and decay,
I look up into a corner room,
broken window open
that overlooks the graveyard of the burned,
I think of the spirit of the building
and a ceiling fan starts turning
a slow, painful song.
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood,
now just bricks, bent steel,
broken windows and wood.
There is beauty in the wreckage,
her lines and shadows are sharp faces of sorrow,
the cut glass of forgotten cheekbones,
she is pale and abandoned,
dusted in cinder and ash,
the inverted womb of a once bustling city,
now a pyramid of loss,
a mountain of handing-off-blame,
a broken heap of history, her-story was Majestic,
we must pick up her broken pieces,
and build a clean slate, a stronger community,
a city government that hears the song of its people,
no more vacant caverns ready to burn,
we must take this loss as a lesson well learned.
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood,
now just bricks, bent steel,
broken windows and wood.
There's a fire in my heart
for this fallen Queen,
her legacy is now a sacrifice,
a tipping point
in the saving of this beautiful town,
we must save the stories,
the magic,
the healing,
the arts,
the buildings that lined the
streets of America's first playground,
we must come together,
pick up the pieces of all the yesterdays
and build a golden tomorrow
with the unwavering bricks and mortar of community,
with the clear windows of unbreakable vision,
with the solid wood frame of cooperation,
with the steel promises of the Hot Springs Spirit,
the healing water that runs through our veins,
the valley's vapor that is our collective sigh of relief,
knowing something beautiful will come of this loss.
There's a hole in the sky
where the Majestic once stood.
If we can build something from Her ashes,
we should.
Local on 02/28/2015