FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

Another chance
Night sky resurrection 
Bruise then
Soothes 

You choose 
Through whisky blues
Cheap tattoos 

Busy streets
Teeming life grooves
To strange beats
Existential speakeasies 
Proves
Electric existence
Is Heavenly

A strange bohemia
Resounds, crowns
Road side cafes
Girls with belly 
Button rings,
Sing
In different hues
Multicolored moods

Hipsters, weirdos,
Freaksters
Congregate in this
Urban delight
Torn jeans, 
Worn boots
Christmas lights hang 
From baristas roof

Eclectically surreal
Is how I feel 
Cars passing by
Intermingle
I drop my dime
And head on
To my next
Crawl

Hunger is the cancer with a cure
bread lines are hiring open mouths.
The discarded pass with empty bellies,
an outstretched hand reaching for crumbs,
that never come.

Money is the panacea of poverty
prostitution wages are tax free.
When she opened her thighs
the world shifted on its axis,
AIDS was paid forward.
Play that on a Trojan commercial.

Freedom is an illusion
painted by white collars.
Section 8 homes are speakeasies
of the downtrodden.
Cardboard boxes are the architects *******,
and trash bin bonfires come calling me.

Sitting on the bench, hontoni arigato and hakagawa bows
Brushing my hair, thankful for a different language
Touching my knees, thank you errantly erroneously
Sit and gardens stare
Wildflowers in two words
Twos often wonder what was the word
Parallelogram vans wish they could be sentences
Pass me with the deans
Two summers bravery Illmatic plays
Slavery washed on me and flowed words with wabi-sabi
Ignorantly searching for simplicity, and intercepting
Lugging learned that he was sober and insightful
Things change inciting when he says I love you, but, I lost Arizona, leaving with LA pallbearers speaking in hymns for the lost weekend
When the two words, change to three words
And the different hangovers for different times
For the lively souls, rap still pays a visit to the nation that held millions, front and back
There lies a line of shining boundaries on the war that fire
Moving like a lava lamp
Back again, frontal lobe pulsates those ups and downs
Delightful lively and where did I lose my shine, and the fire of eyes flickers with the midnight spoon of flickering night streets
Uh soon, **** is a disease masking the ability to change
Politics is where greed wears the mask of morality
But, **** man the less I know them better, right
in the circus of an ersatz clown, as the frugal fire of the murders of the shining and the power of music, burning your conviction in my heart
Dying with the fires of hell, anecdotes of simple fools who can understand simple things
Fools are the wise men when they learn to sharpen their knives
Leave themselves in the sharp mouth of gorillas in the lava iridescent friends, grins writing your heart, your light, your life like a monolith
I miss your thoughts and knowing, and adding what's my own
What can I add to New York state of Mind, does the midnight strike the good night, and ask it to be gentle
As morning cup of tea of burning brilliance of dull months of April under the arid love, that's a moral desert I cannot stop, I'm on the road of life, the battered suitcases catch the candor of deserted times under the train, had it told me you'd to leave the intrigue of the speakeasies, with your French look and glib iridescence of shyness, Canadian stealing cars under the mobsters that leap out
Falling in love and breaking bad would start chasing you
Understanding good and evil, I've been the prisoner of the holy child
Antediluvian time and all that crap, mice among men we crawl the streets in the friend that remembers on the outside
Familial uproar bringing up the baby under the ****** footprints, under drama and cine lights
Life needs a little soul, and a little love to grow imaginative
These years go by, and the pensive life doesn't find solace in good company on the streets belonging to the streetlights, and angry streets with desolate angels

Desolation angels looking for their place in the sun
Fortifying a lot of observation, and marching band with their meters
Challenging themselves, music and jazz, we talk about inconsistency of the eon
Poems, of thee Buddhahood looking for a friend, in the supernatural darkness
Sagacious beams from the life dedicated to accepting the life of cause and effect where I had only but silence
My faction of the Eastern Bloc, we are looking in all directions and running in de jure circles
Facts of scientific, joking in your book and hysterical and naked surly curs on the fruit covered by the dust, I need to embellish these claps
In the fire times, of the watered Cupid in the Venus allegorical girl
Beezlebub lost his mind paraphrasing in Hell, arrived in Lucifer on the cross steeple
In the land of milk and honey, in the passion of the church
I'm laughing at my typing, and the technology has changed and so have the women
I'm the living embodiment of a ceiling now, spinning like an embryo or test tube vestibule
How am I gonna survive on the ability to live like someone has committed suicide for me tonight as it grows hoarse
Stand the generous suicide, it was painless
You know o'er head her still face has madcap laughter at her soundful something, I don't know after I climb the ladder and yell this is the answering bell to doors of Heaven and Hell's doormat, I am a plenary one
Virile yelling on the catatonic piano, we are imagining peace and lost like a dreamer, just like the flower that grows like the uncle in Albert, we just lost our only photographer from the ashram

I saw you from across the room
Locking stares with your icy eyes
Dancing between the hookah smoke and piano notes
The black dress you wore hugged every inch of you perfectly
Showing off the glamour of your feminism

Silhouetted in the dimness of light
Your hips swayed to an invisible beat
Some jazz lament, some pop secret

You were all alone
Surrounded by all your friends
And everyone you've never known

I drank away at the scotch eating away at my insides
Building the courage to whisper a simple hello

The air smelled thick of cocktails and speakeasies,
Intense conversations of after-midnight intents

With a draft twirling thru the darker strands of your hair
You nursed some drink
I couldn't tell what it was
But I imagined tasting whiskey on your lips
And smelling innocence lost on your breath

There was feigned laughter and a cracked smile
A hint of teeth and a vicious tongue

You were the one
I'd been waiting my whole life on

I adjusted the noose around my neck
Thumbed my hands into my pockets
With nervous twitches
And made my way across the room
Drawn to you like Death to a tomb

I parted the haze of wafting smoke
Hooked by the gaze you worked the room with so well

I felt the chill in the air warm as I neared
And I watched you closely
Like a beast hunting its prey
I could see it in your eyes
You were doing the same

I asked you to dance as you finished the last sip of your drink
And sat the glass down on the table with ice cubes clinking seductively
You smiled, baring teeth I wanted to feel deep in my skin

I pulled you closer and smelled your perfume
The smell of intoxication and the crisp nighttime air on a full moon

We held each other tight
One hand on the small of your back
The other entwined in your grasp

With your head cradled to my chest
We danced slow even tho the song playing was loud, fast, and crazy

The room disappeared into an obsidian blackness as we danced
Holding each other close and tight,
Wearing our groove into the floor

You were the one
I've been waiting my whole life for

You were the one
I've been waiting my whole life for

You were the one
I've been waiting for



And then I watched you disappear
As the world came back into focus
And the lights snapped on, brighter than a thousand suns

And then I watched you disappear
As the music stopped
And all the drinks had been drunk, the intoxicated stumbling home

I watched you as you disappeared
Leaving me dancing
Alone

Once upon a time, self portentous reached the fuchsia ****** on the orient in the ghostly daze of Chinatown in tassel-blue linen
Ire of the bar-keepers can be surmised in the *** and soup
The express takes me from place to place, is this some sort of country comfort

Who cooked the wurst, livers of cattle in the pure savagery of the animal farms, dreaming of vegetables too
Hiding in the form of jazz cat hanging around speakeasies, pleasuring themselves in the ravages of good people
I have changed my mind on punishment and the ire of careless alcoholism on the angry streets looking for work

The good people tell me to get work
Am I stealing my time out of mind, I'm poised
By being an unemployed poet out of luck
I am positioned towards the west end

I'm stuck here in the east, wondering if we were always like this
The west wetlands beckon to me, time to get a job and turgidly ravaging beautiful women
But, that's something possible for a man in a western patriarchy
Adonis of Denver ******* in harlots in the west of Hell's Kitchen reminds me of well-acted *******
Making bad decisions in movies seems like a farce

Most of those beat directors are successful *******
They'd beat me if I'd crawl up their personality
Is this fate or am I part of the same successful capitalist Zen
I must be going mad in this monetary fund of scarce neon streets

You should hear me recite Heinrich Boll
The train was on time

For keepsakes, well obligated and drowning in debt
A trip to the orient wouldn't be bad, but, the fire in my painted house swallows me
Someone has to put it the **** out or turn the light cold
Years went by Frumpy went cold and murderous, no more old

Digging into the recess' of my skull
while speaking in tongues
trying to find an absolution
to secrets I'll never know
and I want to possess this thing
that's deep within my soul
and then I could give it a name
if it could make me whole
An endless dialogue in my brain
that ceases only every now and again
on roller-coasters, or speakeasies,
when it's raining or when I'm sleeping
Dancing in this state of mind
any charm will do for a
semblance of the supernatural or
a moment of truth
or live the rest of my life
with my lids slammed shut
in an isolated existence within
dreams I've never touched
Fresh out of breaths
looking through bruised eyes
hypnotized by my palpable perceptions

Our dreams alive, in three songs
You looking to get ******, in the arms of what's going on
Touch about the reality, of the great good of the hearts of the nosegay I took a nosedive, or the opened up fire of the circle's curlicue
Hells burning and sings, and burns the throat of supernatural sordid affairs of the singed dresses, lips quiver and nape the murmurs, closer to your party girl
Listening to the parallelogram lights of nadirs on the cream drop, on the trap, ******* stint rest are we
Sleeping with the nocturne-blonde, wheelchair on the cannibal dynamo of the change looking in product elitism, sold out before they knew they were buying war
You're a bit inside, further into my ferried heart on the wheels of fire of the crossroads of the good,
The hoods out, the special affair sounds like a girl, the number of the pocket
Of the ashcans on Wednesday, so smart about your Hakagaw bows, open doors to my cellar in speakeasies and tensions
On the phone calls, in the terse rhyme sin, the sails determination of confessing our love, in the strong live in the heart of years that do not have any limitation and have no learned lessons,
See tomorrow's is the night that's alive, it's the midsummer's daydream and the midnight cauterized midriff
How do we sell it, and the trench warfare in the solidarity of the streams of dresses in steaming stowaway, maybe we good we have mister magic selling the war in a handful of stardust
Shadow rises in that pass as years go by
Shadow is a pejorative term for copies of running on hurt looks in open books of minds, we have our own wars in piled plasticine in methanol, hydrogen prologue of the helium
Time throws us into the year in the complete word that completes me, and I'm a bit nicer
I'm so lost, I'm a bit nicer
Deep sarcasm in the classroom
The winners have become bad, and no one cares about the losers
What does it mean? I'm not telling you my stories

Mrs. Maisel is
Marvelous!

Set design:
NYC, 1958.

Repurposed speakeasies,
Basement comedy clubs.

Wig, hair makeup:
Yes.

Period props:
Yes.

Costume design:
Fifties fabulousness.

Sound design:
Classic jazz,

50s smaltz,
Faux folk trios

Finger snapping
Beatnik poets: yes.

Acting:
Everyone.

Envelope, please…

And the special acting award for
Above and beyond
Goes to no shlemiel or shlimazel
The Monk with the Funk:

Tony Shalhoub!

(Please do season 2)

Molly Hatchet went                                                    from
saloon to saloon
laying the ground for underground                                       speakeasies
w/ an ax chopping
kegs to bits 'til
the blue cops caught onto
the scam & banned liquor

now is time for some latter
day teenage Molly Hatchet
or more than one
going around to gun shows
with a sledge hammer
smashing all the guns;

someone will smash the
computers & coffee
machines; people will stop
buying new cars & phones;
walking I'll talk to u
when I see u;

                          it's a new
world w/ electric strangers           falling
in love all over the world;

when naked ladies are                  obsolete
from Venus de Milo to Bettie
no one will want to see Jennifer
Lawrence naked & so we'll                                                           look
away from **** to embrace
abstract expressionism

It's a bit of laughter, that goes a long way to just you
If it comes as no surprise, it goes a long way if we, you're you
Looking for canvases of fruits, and tapedecks of Japan, dying pretty hard
My life's in misery, but, I don't what, does it fear to live?
My life's in inescapable fear, and I don't know what it means
Oh doctor, tell me why will my thy will open to the eye of sun and heaven and earth, red earth I'm bleeding out in these rags forlorn for the lost feeling
Hold my high hopes, in the kite running skies that leave my thoughts dry as long as the picture is finding innocence in your reasons, two simple reasons why this in spells of manic depression
Trapped in a young man, and old and dead that spurs madness
Doesn't the piano chime with the murderous hope in my skullduggerous soul, I don't deserve this madness
Dreaming up of skulls, suddenly realizing the death of thine light in my eyes very dubious, beyond false compare
He said I'd just write you free-prose poetry, but, I'm looking for another letter of the Hades Gate, who heard him leave
I'm blowing in the wind, but, I'm drowning in madhouses
Raging with innocence, innocuous and capricious caveats, and talk of the passion without immediate conscious experience
I'm a body without consciousness, and I hear you in the starry skies of your loveless dust ordered in the years of rag ***** and talk of artichokes artistic, chokes me to tears to see what we've become
In a generation of hysterical madness, and I saw the best minds in the yearly bestsellers written by droning bickering pretentiousness, looking for childhood, they found their flickering peace in their cooked up courage in the collated document of liverwurst and hog tails that promised the empty soul to offer its confusion in a soup of surly murmurs in this silent sky, what ideal do I love to choose, adding two and two?
I'm forgetting everyone when I realize I should have forgotten them a long time ago, in the centuries that repeated in the song
Dancing with repetition, in the mayday of restoring heaven
How about I tell you that I couldn't talk to my doctor?
'Cause **** was the disease
How about I tell you, that my house smells, wishing it could make love to stylish artists and teddy bears with adorable aromas, fragrances of time and my mother can't read me, I just read her I write about the battered suitcases wanna travel the swirling minds of childish about desultory blues on the Ray Charles blues in
Playing in the back of a phonograph, in the corsets and flowery eyes that spell danger if I pluck a star from their supernatural darkness in hand-churned ice cream sitting on a desolate understanding of the homes of the lost souls, and I talk of the ceramic ashcans that process the changed minds
That had understood the changes, in the wind wondering what hit them or in videos of gapes of bad mouth in stammering broken lips
Drama is the art of success, and thunderous claps and the noise wants me to cut my life into half measures, and half hollow men
Some of them now kids, we are the studied men with the ignorant looks searching for the light
Understanding that a child can accept the light, the real tragedy strikes when we realize that an adult is scared of us
Sovereign in slavery, talk of the broken lip in white pallor that cries tears of emotional tears of cottages that sail in Morocco in Tangiers
On the ***** streets of hunts, and jousting verbal catatonic piano brilliant hurt, balancing on the fire
That I can't see, and the fall feels cold as hell, and the terrapin stays in the recesses of the doves flying above them
Falling into the side of the dark moon, and the colored literature in the stammering men was a white, well that's how we had the grapevine in this haven
Lend it's heralding living, in the clothes exchanged for jazz, and talking about jazz like it is, for the black men forgiveness
White men are afraid of black men because of expression. And black men are afraid of white men because of the lack of oppression, or the means to tell it like it is with their white lies and white fears of the black man sitting on a bench with his hand in ice creams, it's freezing outside...

White men fear black men because of depression, dedicated to cause and effect
Ghostless towns of the crossbones soulless towns, and following the logic that makes common sense, to avoid the ghosts of their past in the ideas that need to be kept in the past
Maybe true love waits, but, it's not my barking neighborhood
And I hate women with attitudes, and dogs that don't latch the reciprocated greed in a bit of chalk and white flame, green platitude, because happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing
Where's her mom?
She's crying?
Where's her mother in the neighborhood suburbia?
Cashing in, and cashing out without her looks of financial fickle frenzy going into the cries of the howling crummy apartment, doesn't tell when the broken tears stop before they are complete
******* single torn child, an ultimatum for no limitations if your whiplashes the dashed chair, in the undulating tumescence of buildings in howling midnight in the secret garden
Sunflower you look toward the time, identikit caress these battered feelings in that we all know that ought to be found in the hearts that have lost them glow
We are lost in your glow monarchical, we are writing writhing souls looking for offensive erosion
And defensive simplicity in oil and water
In oil lamps burning midnight lamps inscribed in speakeasies, crowded in a quickie
Affixed I'm free to taste the reality of the hydrogen bomb, the best defense is the strongest offense

People think I'm crazy cuz
I'm hot for old ladies;
****** from a bygone
age ageless in their time
who can remember
speakeasies & running
boards, rayon & swing
& other things I can't begin
to imagine; hell, they can
remember segregation;
Beaus going off to war &
never returning; hitchhiking
& living to tell about it;
wearing torn fishnets
to CBGB's (omfug); snorting
coke, shooting ****** & giving a
hell of a reading only hours
after giving a hell of a *******
& a speech the next day
to a student body who will
become Young Republicans;
Asians & minorities ******* up
to the buck; who gives a ****
about them now, they're the old-
school conservatives who agitated for
gay marriage; now that they've
got it who are they going to
marry---each other of course but
just imagine a world filled
w/ happy gay couples growing
old together & watching reruns
from a time when people
were straight; people think I'm
crazy cuz I'm hot for old ladies;
I don't hang out w/ them
(sometimes, if
they're cool as in vintage hepcat),
I mostly just fantasize
about them in their prime doing
the Charleston
& drinking the world
away out of a bathtub
to forget the great
depression; going blind on *****
in China; going up the Amazon
high on peyote, husband after
husband dying leaving a tidy sum;
Ageism *****; there are good isms
& bad ones;
now if a fifteen-year-old ***** (we
all known the type--we raised them)
offered me her body I'd do the math
& ask for her grandmother's number;
now if a seventy-five year old *****
offered me her bones to jump,
I'd count myself lucky; I mean, really,
how often does something so sublime
& twisted come along w/ chamomile
& finger sandwiches

Satan used to be my Father’s right hand.
We called him Lucifer then, ‘the light bringer’
as he always had a ready match. Right hand, get it?  
But somehow he got the idea the old man
was holding out on him. He got together
a bunch of his boys; Beelzebub, Asmodius,
Moloch, all well-known troublemakers,
and tried to take the territory for himself,
storming Heaven; but he didn’t count
on the Angels that didn’t rebel: Michael,
Gabriel, Ariel and so forth. It was Michael
showed him the door, taking him on mano-a-mano
in front of everybody. It was a humiliating defeat
and Lucifer and his boys were cast out
with their tails tucked between their legs.
Now fallen, as Satan, the devil ran a string
of basement speakeasies and illegal
gambling joints. The scratch they brought in
had him thinking maybe one day he’d have
another shot at taking what he thought
should rightfully have been his in the first place.
It had, of course come to me, and look
what I had done with it.