--words

Rescue Mission

A rogue garden grows at his base
balls of light, curls of life
long and bright enough
to leave a trace

A man is the garden about him
birds alight, bombs away
brightness carves
the figure of his face

yet his expression changes, wild as night
among the trees, stifled moonlight peeks
through unkempt branches, unclipped
leaves. Wild, damp, summer darkness–
the insides come out, the insects, instincts,
the smell of death, disorder, the unclear air–
almost leaves you wanting dirt.

A rogue garden grows at his base
balls of light, close contained
long and bright enough
to leave a trace

A man is the garden about him
he stems toward a source
of energy, of life
in steady waves

Portrait for a Friend

Diamonded yet desensitized, hardened, apathetic, glimmering,
straight, he faces a fire place, not smiling not cozying up not decorating
but decorative, ornamented.

His core, restless, surrounded by artifacts, reflected in a blemish, a freckle,
a glint of light on a rim of glasses, is spectacular. His every action is him
to the end of the arc of his influence: a bounce on the balls of his feet;
a snap with his thumb and index finger; the curl at the corner of his
lip, a signature. Observers react with a sign of their own, wave a hand,
light a match, tap a finger to his craft: his life, body, charm, wit, propensities.

With ears gauged, he begs the world for honesty, for openness:
“The streets would be more beautiful if everyone was naked.”
He even cares for those who whine about his attitude, his style, his scars.
He was brought up killing Nazis and zombies for the hell of it
amid a frantic whirlwind of electro-sporadic sounds- music that isn’t music;
violent childhood games: bloody knuckles, smear the queer, sting pong, mercy;
was overloaded and overinformed, and tried to feast his mind on the excess
like a gluttonous sponge.

When he first chose to walk around with a stick inside his earlobe
it was a spiked club, and he had this look like anything you could say didn’t matter.
He was fearless with his colors, scrawny, punky, and uncorrectable.
Now he’s seen a hundred light shows, his music collection could fill an iPad,
and I won’t quantify the girls he’s laid or the crazy words he’s said that mystified,
stunted, or stultified my reasoning with their wide spectrums of applicability.

Before the fire, he talks of when his father died in terms of his emotions,
in a conversational tone which emphasizes his previous outright lack of understanding.
He kneeled skeptical beneath a cross and his father’s casket, a raging tide of angry water
swallowing his rationale; the sweep and focus of face after sobbing face; the quiet mention
of meeting in heaven and a tightening grip of disbelief. Wholeness seemed
tangible, and he clambered out in search of it, finding comfort in the eccentric,
the painfully ecstatic, the psychedelic mode of escape.

So he scratched a hole into his surface and replaced it with an emblem;
and so unwavering, unflinching, exposed, he watches happily the waves of light
wake and die before him, playing upon his painted walls a steady song of life.

Daily Walk

— I followed the sidewalk home, uphill, my course along a stone wall; my ears swallowed by headphones; my dizzy head hungover, my chin buried, spine lazily slouching. Evasive thoughts collected in brief sections of detail- soft clicks of plastic from my headphones in time to my step; large white spots of paint on the brown-gray textured pavement, dog shit and moss in the cracks by the street. I rattled forward confused, searching, alone.

At the top of the hill there was Galway, in all directions. Looking out I saw maroon rooftops poking out of troughs, the college covered in afternoon fog, bulky clouds sitting silently above the looming Cathedral, and a bright blue patch of surreal sky at the western horizon, over another distant hilltop. Over the wall along the sidewalk there was a clearing of long grass and dandelions with rows of discarded lawn trimmings left to decompose. A collie trotted toward me in the distance as a light rain began to fall. My eyes returned to my pace. In a pile of dead leaves on the sidewalk, I noticed a bright, translucent ball of phlegm I might have coughed up in the morning, dodged it just before my foot fell.

As the sun broke through the clouds, the rain continued and the dog approached, quickened, closer to the wall, then leapt and landed at the top, peering over a row of hedges grown closely to the other side. At the horizon, the surreal sky appeared whiter than before, tinged with brilliant blue. The dog leapt from the wall and pounced over the weeds and grass, zigzagging and wagging its tail. My song continued.

For Wood.

“Sit on this bench. It’s pretty good, for wood.”

“This is pretty good for wood.”
“For wood.”

American Strangers

The red line is an underground blood vessel that cuts through the eye of Chicago, the loop, and out through Clark/Lake, State/Lake, north toward Wrigleyville, where the fire escapes are wooden and counterintuitive.
Down in a tunnel we wait for the steel cars to blow a draft of cool air from outside, for the doors to open and the crowds to pile in/pile out, for the next wait of sliding doors (are closing, please do not block the exit) of changing locations faster than feet could travel and anyway we’ve had to walk already and would like as little movement as possible, 2.25 for the ride and it’s going our direction-
but it’s not like those cross-country trains with the mountain backdrop or vast, empty, arid desert expanse devoid of water and life, window seat and a lolling chug of tires putting you to sleep, wind flying softly against the pane.
The red line, the city lines, they bump and shuffle their crowd around. I have to keep a tight grip on the bar and a powerful stance and avoid the punk ass kids and let my weight shift, and try not to make eyes at the beautiful women or try to make eyes at the beautiful women all the way to the land of the Cubs fans.

A black woman with large arms pressed against her sides sways and snaps her fingers singing Jesus came and touched her and she was saved.
She sings so loud her voice reaches both ends of the tunnel clearly. She stretches for a different note and winds it down the register. A group of young black men sing or shout along, a yeah or a note,
and I’m watching an Asian couple with a teenage daughter standing just behind the yellow line, staring down at the tracks in silence and the daughter looks around and I can tell from the way her forehead shines that she’s sweating and come to think of it, her parents’ necks look like they could be dripping as well
and I quickly become astounded at how many people in this tunnel are wearing long pants.
It’s hotter in the tunnel than outdoors, but even outside I wouldn’t think of wearing anything but shorts, summer in Chicago, I’d chafe myself red, the jeans would whittle my legs into toothpicks if they’re not already toothpicks.
We’ve been waiting for at least ten minutes now and the singing woman finishes a song and stops to introduce herself. From a distance, I see her head swivel and search for eyes on her, but no one seems to be looking besides me and when she’s finished with her introduction she continues right on to the next song, a song of praise in a desperate time,
and I can see the Asians are getting desperate now.
They shuffle their feet. They wipe their foreheads. They have an unheard conversation in a huddle and turn to exit the station, a waste of 5.75 and I can tell the father has second thoughts because he pauses and looks back as he approaches the escalator.
Will the train never come? and When it does, do I really want to stand worried and huddled in this crowd for a slow, bumpy ride, uphill, pausing for the doors to close? I could take easily take a cab. And watching him make the final step onto the escalator, I think he’s right, a cab without American strangers sounds lovely but even then you’ve got the cabbie and a big tip to avoid pissing him off-
not that I think this fine looking Asian man is afraid of a cabbie, but why upset a driver who you know has a long day and could very well make the roads even more treacherous with his reckless, angry swerving, cutting off pedestrians and laying on the horn?
You can’t escape the strangers even in your own car, so I don’t mind the CTA for a big slash under the eye of this city, alive as the people that make it up.

Besides, I’m a sucker for strangers.
I love to slip a simple joke in a quiet crowd and smile and peer around hoping to meet an eye
because who do I really know? and why should I treat anyone differently than them?
I love a brief understanding, so I talk about Lollapalooza as the train starts to move, and I think about the headliners on the sign above the window, a brick wall scrolling past: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, The Black Keys, Jack White. Four colors we all can relate to.
“Are you going to Lolla at all, Andrew?”
“No, man.”
“Oh? You don’t want to see Black Sabbath?”
A chuckle and the joke dies, a match in the wind. Beaming, I find a pair of nearly clear eyes, wide, but not smiling. She hadn’t heard the joke and I probably should not have been looking at her, either way.

We ascend above the cars into sunlight and the views are now rooftop patios, Budweiser signs, company titles and streets crowded with walkers, bikers, drivers of all kinds.
The cluster inside the train has thinned to a few standing passengers. I was able to take a seat next to a girl who looked my age and peer too closely over her shoulder out at the city in the evening, avenues in shadows, sunlight pouring across the numbered streets like endless streams of golden paint, slowly turning to red, to purple and fading blue over the blacktop.
I try to picture my mother in this seat, would she revel in the view as I do?
Or dream of cozy car and faithful engine, of life separate and comfortable, family and friends, convenience and no chance of catastrophe- no robberies, no break-ins, no murders, no battery, no gun violence whatsoever- but the occasional death and funeral and tears for me and mine and those close to them and I;
but you can’t avoid the strangers, and I know I would be quick to cry for the death of any man or woman in my vicinity, this city or any,
in hopes a single tear could wet the earth and help something spring from it with life and love.
But I compare it to the flood I’d raise for my mother if she died, and I laugh myself off of that subject because life will go on, and why should I allow myself to think about that before it happens?
I catch a man’s smile on the sidewalk and I nod at him, hoping he will briefly understand.

draft

I am halfway through a most unhealthy strip of cow thigh grilled with onions and stuffed between ketchup and spicy mustard, spinach leaves, Colby cheese, and two ends of a loaf of multigrain bread. The sandwich drips yellow, greasy piles of cheese and hot, liquidated cow fat onto the plate, and the mixture sticks to the nearly unnoticeable hair that lines my lips. I can feel my whiskers glisten, but I cannot see them in my reflection in the open kitchen door, soft ends of loaves firm in my fingers and my body has that shine that only hours of sweaty work affords.

A Metra southbound train arrives at Front Street station at 10:30 P.M. this Tuesday night, horn wailing its approach. I hear it blocks away and my thoughts shift lanes from sandwich, sweat, and facial hair into whirling southbound motion, like I’m in mid conversation and I hear my favorite song on the radio and all I can do is follow my favorite melody, or, more accurately, my head is forced underwater and for a length of time there is nothing but descent away from oxygen; a shocking, desperate rollercoaster ride and all I want is to be high, so I look at my reflection and wonder about my direction- where is this train taking me? and how did I get here? and what did I leave dead along the road? Cow thigh in my grip— dairy product/dairy product—vegetables shipped about a thousand miles total, packaged and shipped another thousand miles—plates and tables, family home— constructed life and meal for the American constructed:

This sticky sweat on my skin and greasy grin is how I show my gratitude for my life, gifted. It seems a sin to think that we’re all trying to be the best that we can be, and that those we slaughter on the way are the lesser ones.

The train soon flies with a passing howl into the meatlocker of Joliet, and I forget and finish my meal, looking next for a hot shower and a wash of my hands.

For the morose-

I left a trail of rock piles on an aimless walk through a small patch of woods not far from my home. When I reached the end of the woods, I stood in a nearly empty parking lot behind a strip mall. The building was long and brown, with dumpsters behind the rear doors. A faint wind carried the scent of trash and gasoline from the road not far from the building. I heard the distant rush of cars, and the leaves at my back colliding in the breeze, as though they were confused and shaking their heads, turning in circles and running into one another on a dance floor or crowded storage area. I turned back to the woods and retraced my path through the high grass and bushes at the edge of the trees and soon I was engulfed in the cool shade of the forest. It was a warm, cloudy afternoon, so the wild sights were damp and gray, but all around was the deep, lively green of leaves and weeds, untrimmed and left to fight and grow for space in the mud. Chirping birds and the distant bark of a lonely dog propelled me.

Evening was coming on as I walked a similar path as the morning, and I felt that I was recovering the ground I had gained, but the solitary views of treetops, of flowering plants and the creek that splits the woods- all of these sights I saw in the reverse of my original perspective. I came upon three rocks I piled by a group of thorn bushes, where a dangling black spider made me jump. The rocks had not changed since I had left them, but the spider, I noticed, was in the process of inhabiting my structure by building itself a funneling web. As the day grew darker, I noticed that the scenery I had observed on my earlier walk had changed for the morose. Most notably, there was a short, fat tree with a hollow opening at the bottom. Spray painted above the opening were two blue eyes which, in the light of the daytime, I could describe as smiling, like bright blue Irish eyes. In the guise of darkness, however, the painted human face became a sick and wild scowl, which beamed above my rock pile, signaling me to hurry back home.

“Slingshot”

This is written in response to “Walkaways” by Marcia Aldrich

Hello to twenty-twelve. Hello to inconsistency, the elasticity of the timeline. Hello to a new beat, a new narrator unlatching, unpacking his new suitcase; to heading for twenty-thirteen and waving hello to the afterthought; to every thought. Hello to thinking ahead. Hello to twenty-thirteen.

Hello to brief, uncomfortable pauses between stanzas; a coughing break. Cardboard boxes between cardboard boxes between bookshelves packed into the back of a U-Haul parked between U-Hauls. Hello to uncomfortable unpacking; to pauses. Twenty-thirteen. Hello to changing resources; another coughing break between. Hello to filling a new box, early in the century. Hello to head starts, to thinking ahead; to slower speeds down the road, the careful search of overhead highway signs in unexplored territory.

Hello to digitalia, a text message from hell, moving closer to the speed of light; to holographic sex shows, real to the touch. Hello to telepathic sexting, early in the century and it’s all up from here. Hello to awkward interactions, miles apart, moving only the fingers. Hello to naked mirror snapshots; perfect ass and tits and we’re still just kids. Hello to probing fingers; to poems scribbled onto iPad; to screensavers, auto-savers, lifesavers. Hello to marine rescue; to stores of memory; to newfound apathy. Hello to a new standard of living, the iPad. Hello to lack of pubic hair; the shaved generation, who still want their privates smooth as a baby’s. Hello to rising conflict: Gillette Fusion versus iPad stylus; to the smooth and the handwritten, the handwritten into smooth surface; the shaven stanzas; it is still early in the century – soon they may be gone. Hello to good morning, unpacking into goodnight. Hello to stiff as cardboard, musty like aftershave, rising from the car door; cardboard between cardboard between old seat cushions. Hello to useless language; to exercise; to boxes of notebooks burned as kindling for the first bonfire in the new world; to rethinking; to relocation, Montreal café, sunny-windy morning, new city smelling like an old motel with smoking rooms. Hello to twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen; to twenty-nothings, old friends – I’ll never figure them out again; they’re hippies and poets; like ashtrays and outstretched elastic, suburbanites; maybe I can stretch them into twenty-thirteen, but after that they’re hopeless. Hello to hopelessness, early in the century; a pause for recollection between stanzas.

Hello to the slingshot; to settling in; to exponential expansion. Hello to fresh faces, distant old ones; to loss. In a sense we are hopeless, you and I; the reader and the hippie-poet; the reader himself; hopeless all because we cannot reach each other; the reader himself especially; who else is he reaching for, the reader? Himself? Twenty-thirteen; closer to the speed of light. Hello to contact; to my fountain and your chasm; to our connections, overflowing pubic manes to hide the swelling, the smell of sweat, lingering aftershave, and latex. Hello to love and freedom in each other; to unlatching the last bra strap on the hologram. Hello to telepathic reincarnation; to sending yourself to me through muddy airwaves without moving a stubby finger; to relocation. Hello to depth of solitude; to longevity of interaction; to elasticity between the two. Hello to moving on; returning to the moment. Hello to the present, your presence. Hello to the real thing. Hello to twenty-twelve.