Sunday #15

Chicago Odyssey


Home

A quarter century perched
between the weeping giants
of the Midwest--
     one, with glorious tears
     falling upon the ground
     and springing up in twisting
     spires of steel and glass,
     the other, with rust stained
     cheeks and stubble shaped
     from the crumbling corpses
     of a pre-Depression dream.


Paw Paw: Just So Nice, They Named It Twice

Small town reverse momentum--
the padding between a colliding life.
No hermits, saints, mad scientists,
just thin mothers and their hungry spawn,
young couples so long together
they've begun to morph into the same shape.
All lives, smudges on the map
between points of interest.


Reunion

twin brother faces removed by time
and conjoined again in momentary memories.

the insertion of past lives frozen
into the newly polished, pulsing, growing
shine of a separated seed spread upon
the westward blowing wind.

what's the story weeping brother?
new sprout tears upon a roasting
wooden roost overlooking the squatting
gem of the vast lake.

the city slid to the side,
a glide upon un-choked highways
to the calm old places
and a transplanted familiarity
in an unknown shaking attic.

airplanes and traffic and the aortic
spurting of a vibrant world
wrapping the peace of timeless static
drawn through the foggy past
and found with newborn old eyes.

let's baste the roof with cigarette butts.
I will leave
the tar in my lungs
and let stubs
of tobacco and paper
bake in the sun
we'll never see
from this perch tomorrow.


Traffic Jam

a single drop of water
affixed in the midst
of the anonymous sea
streaming by the window
reflecting a thousand crystal
lights, orange and blue, flaming
white, dancing upon the edge
of the rational spectrum--

all light condenses into shadow
halos shrouding illuminated faces
transfixed by a midnight emergency.

worry and bother,
curiosity and a stoney ambulance,
all flush knuckles and the knobs
of the steering wheel
beyond the grasp
of that anonymous sea.


The Elevator Room at the Top of the World

ancient machinery sparking
to a monolithic, disinterested audience
in the throes of near-organic midnight.

just reworked stone devoid
of the flesh machines running
the cables with automatic
flicks of the lobby button.

just empty gap-tooth grins
in the city horizon
smiling out at the fellow elders--
     nocturnal clankings,
     forgotten arcane steel,
     the rusted city guts.


Detente

piano adrift in the night city air
playing askance distant sirens--
peace in the middle of kinetic,
frantic lives.


The Cats Come on Little Cat Feet

Mingus rolled on my lap,
exposing white and lifted paws
and twisted, feline balance,
into a new position--

she plucked my stomach
like her namesake with talons
attacking catgut and a barrel-chested
bravado permeated the night smoke.


Preparation

weary travelers rest their heads
upon eastern promises
interpreted through chemical western eyes--

the silver and bronze cities transposed,
frustrated vibrancy against hopeful decay,
full time suburbs and the rattling retraction.

all lives and cities are the same--
mothers and their french fry kids,
young dresses waiting in a night queue,

a diaspora of paths,
but the feet tap out cousin
rhythms, fingers pluck sister strings

and the songs all blend
into one chanted hymnal devoid
of time and loss

encompassing willing ears in eternal
knowledge--


Words of Departure

What now, sleeping brother?
Shake off your rust and know
we are all discarded
rubbers at the bottom
of cheap plastic wastebaskets.

and there can
never be
anything
holier.


Signs

one sign hung above
the encroaching eastbound city--
     a dove constructed
     of beautiful blue notes,
     wax wings of blind hypocrisy
     and a timid sun
     unable to burn them away.
     he will not place
     a common stain
     on the still-mystical earth.


Epitaph

The road dust clock ticks
its last humble seconds
and all city visions and country questions
fold up into neat rear-view packages.

Sunday #14

An old-school (for me) style poem.


Measuring

the preposterous melancholy
of a summer simmering
against the silent ticking
of a doomsday egg timer.

a winter's born too
of the same meandering air--
     wears the same clothes
     at the end of its stay,
     the comfortable garb
     of a guest too long lived
     and now one with the wallpaper.

temperature, a moot detail--
     (hair color, shoe size, favorite food)
boiled down (the simmer lost),
or frozen, all seasons
adhere to the same shape
in memories--
     a life measured out
     in ice cube trays,
     and a fear of overflowing.

Sunday #13

Short one today, probably not finished.  My apologies.


Untitled


dreams like manacles,
with the key
lost between the twisted
sheets,
crumpled at the foot
of the bed.

Sunday #12

 morning stanzas

the scarification of restless sleep

and a morning spent surveying

new wounds, all the same shape

and color, vivid pink highlighted

in returning sunlight, and blue

houses blooming against red bricks.

the moments of contrast, reflection,

a fresh day's coat of paint before

fading with the encroaching dusk

and a sickle moon seeks to make

its new cuts--

        an endurable, terrible cycle.

Sunday #11

Rituals


Bird Disposal

A silhouette against the setting sun, the colors draining,
collecting upon the horizon, leaving a dull foreground
of black metal bars, cold grey concrete, and the muted,
silent feathers of the immobile pigeon, motionless beneath
the railing of my balcony, staring towards the west.

I grabbed a broom, quietly, with respect for the dead's final
sunset, waited for the sun to pass the distant trees and,
with a tentative poke, tried to dislodge the recently deceased,
but found the task too difficult for tenderness, so I steeled
myself for a more assertive strike against the fading gray body.

The jab of the broom handle landed squarely, shifted the bird
slightly and, as the sun extinguished its light beneath the distant
sea, the feathers began to flap, the pigeon hopped around, alive,
a miracle above the city, until it took a final step off the balcony
and fell, again just a pile of dirty feathers for someone to clean.


The Temporary Resurrection of Fagilyu

I am reminded of those Victorian fears
treated by elaborate machines poking
through the fresh earth, topped by a bell,
and the calm, besuited gentleman
entombed and slowly announcing
his life to the mistaken outside world.
What chorus if all the dead returned
and rang out through empty graveyards?

She attended her own funeral, locked
away in a coffin, thought gone
and returned screaming, an honest reaction
far removed from the calm ringing of bells.
No slender machines, just a heart
stopped by the realization that everyone
already assumed her first death was a final one.


Twin Roses

Roses lifted from coffins separated by feet,
at ceremonies separated by years,
together still, though withered and dead--

and there were other flowers, too, not kept--
those purchased because one died shortly
after St. Patrick's Day and they arrived

at the funeral home, white and dirty green,
recycled leftovers from a verdant celebration,
falsely festive and gaudy against the others

sitting at the base of an open coffin, morose
shades drawn from the once-living cheeks
now twisted in formaldehyde serenity.