Monday, September 30, 2013

INCLINE

Hanging over what is 
now a pastured
pile of highway rubble—busted- 
up chalkdusty con-
crete slabs and 
pieces jammed out at all angles—a horse-

powered pack of unreal
cranes dangling masonry
is not just fixing-
on building 
a steep offramp to some-
where—it's furious-
ly demolishing 

the tall fictions
that hereto-
fore existed
bliss-
fully down 
in the 
thin and big 
pages of an idyll-
ic blueprint somewhere.

Meanwhile—on the other
side of the 
chaos—caucused horses 
grounded in clover swish calm 
and wonder—
what's any of this
dust got to do with

wild oats alfalfa grass straw hay or heck maybe 
even dangling— 
carrots for extra motivation.

Friday, September 27, 2013

THE HOUSE HUSBAND

No expensive-
sounding
arabesques, I'm
afraid—and no
fancy tricks; these slight

righteous hands were just
never made to be
too hot for folding-
up or cold-calling.

They've
just got good
fingers for firm plums—

for holding stiff
picks and pens and things—

and for clenching
thick
books to swat (to strains
of the 1812
Overture in boxer
shorts, per-
haps?) any lazy

fat Autumn houseflies I
might find—but only
for my

jumpy
dog's druthers, of course.

GOOD OL' FASHION

Two-
way

interaction!—
like,

sure,
middle-

kid,
there'll be

room at the top,
no question!—

soon?
as

the bottom's done
collapsin'.

PANG

In the thin beery alley
just after
dusk—pulls its mauve-
turning-indigo-

colored covers over cool
old Chicago—
a man's murky outline
stains the driverside

window of his white conversion
van as he idles there
cramming—a paper-
wrapped burger with one hand.

With a slithering hot shiver, I
realize, walking past, that I've
all-together stopped—
listening to my headphones.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

SORRY SANDBURG

All 
the fog
across town

is dead now—its little
cat feet

got spooked
and

scampered—
back 
into the fusty back-
wards 

Chicago River this 
feisty morning,

where it drowned—
completely
un-

considered—
shrouded by the thick-
ly modern 

sound of all those 
daffy clang-
ing 

jack-
hammers ringing through downtown!

GREAT DEPRESSION

In the red after-
noon 
silence occupying another 

retreating rough-
and-
tumble workday—you wonder 

which
would help you
fill-
up faster—an encountered busker
out on your 

office corner, singing Life's 
a Bowl
of Cherries loudly—or 
maybe

simply—
staying-
put and quietly 
chewing—just three or 
four chilled chunks of gooey

nectarine in your impoverished
privacy?

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

MORE THAN A FEELING

How—
Super Sounds
of the 70s 
sluice down 

through
perforated  
tin cans above—
muddling

the future-
white 
contours of

this nonplussed—
BP gas station pavilion.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

ANDANTE

Pleasant-
ly rude 
and
rumpled this morning—and 
feeling
it deep
down in each 
of
battalions 
of
billions 
of
stiff little capillaries—my two desiccated  

smart-
aleck lips 
are—somehow 
quick 
to pull slow drags
from 
a luke-
warm green travel 
mug 
of paste-
colored 

coffee and cream and 
cinnamon—and sure, miss, I'm ready—

in a 
minute, 
that is—to look 

over those 
files you were all asking-
after last

week or whenever—

PATIENCE AFTER GALILEO

Spinning slowly into yellow
autumn—above, faint traces 

of clean high stratus 
clouds and criss-

crossing contrails are
sustained across 

the spacious and wind-
glazed sky of glass— 

freshly making crystal 
clear the writing 

that stains it—one ought never 
to die 

for Truth.  Because it really 
doesn't need any extra room.

Monday, September 23, 2013

AUTUMN LANDSCAPE WITH RED LINE CONSTRUCTION ONGOING

Men—
in vests 

and glinting hard-
hats 

are tightly 
Monday

morning-
caucused

across
the bulldozed 

CTA tracks—

leaning hard (on 
skinny shovel 

handles) 
and talking rather 

breathlessly— 
fast 

about 
the passing-

game 
last night.

Friday, September 20, 2013

FOURTH HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE

A high-
end-looking garbage
man in red

headphones—dribbling
over-
flowing black bins

past me
in the soggy alley—unwittingly
rejecting

my over-
courteous good morning—

ALL WAYS

The morning star—was really
Venus;

the evening
one—will be the same.

Imagination seems
to point us to what's possible

but maybe not—
always?

Thursday, September 19, 2013

METONYMY FOR RUSH HOUR

Admit it! late-
nineties white
Crown
Vic—cruising not
terribly quick-
ly in the right
hand lane
of the harried express-

way—you kind
of get a little
bit of a
kick—
from the fact that
everyone! out
here sort
of—
thinks you're a cop.

MAKROKOSMOS

Under certain 
given 
atmospheric- 
pressured conditions, I freely 

submit—that 
the 
candybright 

banner
brimming with mid-
western

wind 
at 
the 
top 
of that 
great silver pole—plays-

out 
like a
dynamite! boffo! commercial—

for 
The U. S. of A.

Though, 
admitted-
ly—my subsequent 

thought 
on the subject
is usually

just—
the hunch that some 
truly great

show must be getting interrupted.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

RED LETTER EDITION

Okay, I give 
up—this New 
Covenant's too

long—lists all clever-
ly,
arranged 
and
—redacted. 

I just want 
to be 
emphatically—right

where I ought to
be—blasting Vivaldi's bright
Autumn iii endlessly

banging my head
off the butt
of some joke—stoking

my appetite 
through dumb force
of sheer exercise—

and after-
words, 
hell!—

I swear I could 
eat a whole 
plague of locusts for breakfast—just

do me one 
favor—stop 
talking already! 
and quick! pass 
me over that—

wild honeycomb.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

SCHERZO

Funny these 
rusty 

days, 
so many—

dark figures 
of 

birds just 
resting—

snug on the 
lean 

and tilted east-
facing

woodgrey 
poles 
of

old 
above-
ground 

power lines so—nonchalantly

mocking—
the west's 

best go at 
ful-

some, serious 
September 

—wind.

GOG V. MAGOG

Late-September 
daisies
are a good deal

smaller—and more

innocuous—
than those smartly 

farmers-
marketed June 

ones you 
presumably remember;

and a heck of a lot 
harder—
to notice anyway 

behind all those  
obnoxious—mums 
everyone's 

probably been talking 
your ear off about.

Monday, September 16, 2013

XXL

Sub-
urban cowboy—plainly 
wary 

of the uniformed 
guard on-patrol
in the lobby—I wonder,

idly—which chain 
store your
denim's from?

TRANSUBSTANTIAL

Hungry-
to- 
learn—eyes

become 
ears become 
noses become mouths until—nothing 

out here 
is not identified—
and nothing 
is left

uninterpreted. Like the old
saying used 
to go—meaning!

meaning! every-
where!—not a bit

that's fit
to eat
for breakfast!—now

we know—

those flowers out there split-
ing

rocks are poison.

COY NOTE FROM HIGH SCHOOL REVISITED

Kate—will you go
to the barn dance 

with me? I don't care
when; I don't know—where

it is—just
circle one—yes—or maybe no;
either 

way, don't
tell your friends—if they really 

want
to know, anyway, the only

thing I truly care
about of course is—

discourse surrounding us.

Friday, September 13, 2013

MEDLEY

From trees—
cheep-
ing birds
 
flap 
heralding bright 
full 
gusts of 
new autumnal 
wind—

the kind that 
rustle all their dusty
branches—displacing these 

tussled grass-
fulls—of embarrassed 
would-
be apple hopefuls that 
now look—

so 
pretty 
dis-
appointed.

DOG EAR

Faint and 
Pavlovian—tingling

bells mean 
white carts of easy-

enough-to-
catch ice cream—

Thursday, September 12, 2013

ONTOLOGIST

I guess 
in the 
end—What I'll 
Be
is a list—he 

was born,
then he
worked
for a while, then 
he died (perhaps addend—in a 

personal style—
sincere 
but not 
serious—his words

they were neat and 
distinct—and a lot

of them touched 
off some slight-
ly unique-
ly benign 
public consequence).

But the matter 
of—Who 
I'll Be seems

a bit messier—even 
as I suppose
that it's

only three—
of these

neat letters—TBD.

ECHELONS

The Department 
of Motor Vehicles 
was just an awful

big collection of rectangles
stuffed—
inside of 
bigger rectangles 
endlessly-
so, or so 
it was
thought—'til the thought

so it went—got all 
kinds of square-
rooted,
then 
diced, 
then 
just hollowed- 
out and
replaced with something cheaper but similarly nice 
called—
Administration.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

SQUEAKY

This is not to say 
that I'm 

complaining—about 
such 
ardent odd 
September heat.

This—is just 
me sort
of saying—

that all I want
to do
is sit—close
by a wheezy 
brown dog in a rusty

swing on a 
porch that's 
been painted up—haint 
blue 
or 
better—yet 

maybe painted mint-

green chocolate-
chip ice cream—

TICKY-TACKY

The smug
bird crowing 
hard and proud-
ly 
from 
inside the grubby 
nest he made

on top
of the roof
of the snug
coach house
that I'm 
afraid—
to put a nail in

has made
me pin
the 
following down—

a poet who's
unknowing—
is always

more at-home
than one

who's just—unknown.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

A LESS-INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Record-breaking
temperatures 
are

no-news 
at all—
to

the clever old 
oily-slick

duck 
who's bobbing—so coolly 

up
and down
over 

there in your 
septic-

brown 
backyard water feature.

WABI-SABI

Effortless-
ness 

comes hot

and 
ready—whenever

pizza and two
liters—of 

Coke is dinner.

Monday, September 9, 2013

(THE PAST IN THE) PRESENT

Solemn and
morning-

dark workplace 
linoleum—still sticky 

from the dribbled
juice of an old 

perfect peach 
that you gave me—mustering

hunger—for awkward
and half-

remembered—
home tap-dance duets.

SATORI STORY

Walking with such 
a funny 
purpose and sweating 
through 
my best stuff 
out 
in the balmy 
wooded suburban 
street—I hear (what

else but) shrieking fucking
treefrogs!—
un-
dulating 
hundreds 
multiplied upon
the hundreds in-
exhaustibly 
screaming bloody
murder over-
head and over 
again with-
out much 
fuss over mis-
under-
standings, and I can't—

help but
—then 
there—suddenly! clutch 

the under-
lying 
Truth they're humming—Life
as
such—
is sometimes thus—just exhausting.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

UNION

Slow precision—
behooves the dust-
sweaty 

pink Russian 
tuckpointer stooped 
over chewing—

messy-ish 
bread and egg 
salad on lunchbreak.

Friday, September 6, 2013

AUGURS

The floppy flock 
of teen boys loafing 
lean and
pale and shaggy-

headed—and trying 
its best to come-off
illicit—while hopelessly 
packed in baggy maroon 

polos inhaled by yawning 
khakis—still manages
to look—rather 
unbelievably 

cool—splayed-
out against the ancient
catholic school without AC.

KNEE PLAY

I swear I wouldn't
even bother

asking a blind man
waiting—to cross

the street
with me at North
and Damen

such an uninteresting
question as—whether

he thinks
of lights
as red
or if
there's maybe

something better—I'd so much
rather

hear what it's like—

to smell
the Starbucks on the corner.