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

1739

Some say goodnight—at night—
I say goodnight by day—
Good-bye—the Going utter me—
Goodnight, I still reply—

For parting, that is night,
And presence, simply dawn—
Itself, the purple on the height
Denominated morn.

71

A throe upon the features—
A hurry in the breath—
An ecstasy of parting
Denominated “Death”—

An anguish at the mention
Which when to patience grown,
I’ve known permission given
To rejoin its own.

I see the lot, denominated in slots, automated in spots, weakest to the plot, and I'm not, convinced it is wrong, nor minced in my longing for a song, a song to the sum, to the sun, to the one unto the ones unto none, nada, nothing, but a hum from beyond, a rumbling from a haunt, stumbling from a heart, belonging to a spark that departed a long-long time ago, where it started, and I'll go-go back there for the harp, for the halo, for the art of it, standing on the stars, apart, but a part of it, I'll go for the horns, for the dark, and for the parts discarded, I will, try my hardest, to remain in progress, a battery that charges for the harvest of the starkest of the larvae unto the fiercest flies, unto spider webs in fragile skies, finite lines up high, where I'll die knowing I flew, die knowing the truth, the use, the abuse, the ruse, the heights of my sight, igniting in the lie, in the cries, so distant now, but a distinctive growl from yesteryear's child so mild, so wild as to be outed by a new sound, so profound as to drown the complexity out, and simply shout from anyone's mouth, reading out-loud and clear, my cloud, my thoughts, my fear, left right here on a single space, where I placed it and saved it away in the seventh day of this resting case, that is all but closed, a screen saver transposed as knowns exposed, and I'm aroused in knowing the doubts are clothed in lace, soaked on display for my placation's of our days, the daze, hazily grazing on the safe, the fates, locked in a slate, for later placement to a shape, I'm hate, wrapped in a hopeful taste, waiting for a saying to say it all,  ~ I'm spaced.

Don't remember much after kissing that cold brow
it was hard marble and most unlike father's warm skin
his tombstone made of honorable granite soldier's chin
don't remember kissing mother off, though lips did avow

At home tears filled each cracked and crumbled memory
washing years off family ties and turbid sentiments
eventually it ground mother down, to earth-stone treachery
prevented, being buried near to dear, by denominated impediments

Amnesia forms around these roots dissolved in Greek tragedies
padres loose hijos and their fathers lost theirs, immemorial
full of forced forgetfulness and years trudging absently
yet sinew of connective tissue thoughts hold off this cryptic burial

Stored in each molecule of life through generation's seedcase
clings a cocooned incarnation of movement's creation
secret, silent and concealed; ephemeral as a dream-space
"drink sweet waters and be mute" and forgo your ideations

-cec

It seems unsolvable
Completely
Improbable
An equation
With no answer
They tell me to add pounds
But they add more doubt
Subtract self-hate
But all I do
Is lose myself in the problem
Beauty standards?
I’m on the bottom

I’m a fraction
Denominated by ideals of
Perfection
Numerated by my
Own demons
Like pi
I’m irrational
However I am not infinite
Only temporary

Average me out
Calorie count
Weight in pounds
Calculate the BMI
But
My
Inverse
Operation
Can’t be ignorable
Trying to find a semblance
Of self control

Factor it out
Solve for x
What piece
Of the puzzle
Did they forget
When they wrote my
Problem

Keep subtracting
I’m shrinking
Prime number
Divide me
By my own weight
Half of a person
Less than the other
Negative exponent
In a positive
Expression

Graph it out
Linear equation
You don’t need
A computer
To see the
Decrease in
Motivation
3D?
More like 2 dimensions
Paper thin with
Pencil markings

Multiple choice?
More like multiple guess
Balance the scale
Life is a short answer question
Sum it up
In a few words
It’s the beauty equation

Forever then came like a battle
out of a parade, chaos out a
celebration,  color out a prism
All banded,  separate,  but one,
None more colorful or known,
a gathering of none,
black as the moonless night, hovering above,  cold seen but invisible as icicles on a caves entrance, utterances
High and low voices forming no words but a guttural instinct and a glow from heaven
Or below?
As sects, theological participants disbanded became part of it all a half soul half soup conglomeration of writhing
Arms legs and hearts unwoven their denominations woke up
To stare at the awakening the unknown.
Who knows what they said.
Or felt or clutched.
As they faded back into the cathedrals of dust.

The pure core of The Donald,
that is when he's stripped down
to his essential essence much like
the very last doll in the Russian doll
set-up where one reveals another is
colored green & has pictures of
Washington, Hamilton, & Jackson
includes a religious proclamation
together with some esoteric Masonic
or such magic pyramid with an all-seeing
floating eye & an eagle grasping vegetation
in its claws as curious almost tantric circles
overhead & Latin sayings abound all tattooed
& water-marked to stop counterfeiters
& numbered & in series & signatures
& bold, bold numbers ...

the core of The Donald is denominated & in
the very greenest of greens.

Says Etréstles: “The immortality Aeternitas trepanned the fury of enchanted isolation after descending from the crow's nest on a trip to Rhodes, sinking haggard towards an underworld dressed without pain or ischemia that complained to me originating from transient cellular fatigue. This was enchanting me towards another pseudonym that renews it under the pretext of digging itself into the eternity of unspeakable silence full of possessions in shallow Beech leaves, and above all those ungerminated senses. Abbreviated topic and placebo speeches that were exerting a cluster of cloaks of once fermented and materialized in disconnected lapses disintegrating towards their perpetual movement, exiled and physical-dynamic, but not eternal. Aeternum was boring itself into the continuity of perpetual preaching where nothing and no one emits it out of everything unknown chaos overwhelmed or becoming independent of its effects full of irony and tragic moans sniffing out its dying flat lux, and separating into double archetypes torn from the rehearsal of the thousandth life like all reflective floaters not being afraid of being in a substance that was seeing itself crazy and seduced from its imaginary. For everything that is intolerant, unable to see rolling chariots of fire and not evolving with the exactness of an eternal minstrel. When we were on the deck of the Eurydice I saw how they danced through some diaphanous fingers when observing how the same color of the Ouzo was fading all over its sudden and rebellious sphinx, falling from its own feet insinuated to others that they were apprehended when counting of the cheers and emotions to be later discerned in Aion's ashes. Powers of a potential beginning became a cautious being In Aeternum in a straight line to his clone without beginning or end, without time or matter, being himself his own deity rebelling from the correlated fractal dam. What notion is born from the concept of “Instantaneous being, immune to the cloistered effective and continuous knowledge when materializing as a god…, God of Bern-Gethsemane, among the songs of abyssal seas before the perfection of a hymn, ceases to exist, falling out of tune in the court of Aionius”. I stresses; mandated the zeal to stay in the twelfth cemetery being able to get rid of the symptoms of ****** and Harpies with the flourishing of venerable pious beings like Vernarth, behind these beautiful winged women remaining lustful just by looking at him, and subsequently being swallowed with all their evil thickness resulting from snowy genius. All of them rested with their sharp claws breaking their intrinsic heart in everything that is sometimes a tear before moving through banal philosophical philanthropy, which was lightening their days to discount it in what they learned from another pair, not being the subsequent ones same. Nothing is suffering like the jubilant flute that solfeggio when its sounds are randomly listless making ****** in its trepidation with harmonious notes and emaciated tears on the surface of a mask. Behold, his parallel face is a disfigured universe, not being possible to count distances between his equidistant eyes, and formerly sighs that go unchecked with his physiognomy at the end of the egress that rubs against his relative beloved, disintegrating his own turned into nothing. All these ailments are melified universal emotions that stand out in harbingers of destroyed futures described in some Olivacea Bern branches, made up of the precepts of multiple physiognomies, father and son hating of so much affection and orbiting in lasting decadent cycles with areas and divine contained rootlets of Beech tubers satiated in reliefs of insane emancipating curves..., called Empresses of Vernarth, just like In Aeternum with spaces falling from various inter-tempos to its high grace and radiant help towards the final pinnacle that was ready in the will to lighten him up and go cornering leaf after wasteful leaf.

Everything was recreated in minuscule variations between Romanzas Tchaikovskianas, recent and terse when they divulged him near the Volga. Vernarth planned with the facade of him to resist amid musty and gutted late musical papyri; called scores of illusion and fervor at the sound of the celestial harp that was nothing more than another harpy, coming close to him as it fell on the pegs that struck a Muscovite bell. The borders in themselves became a reality in his space and accompanied him, making him feel that he was still outside the spaces of the Hermitage when he remembered it..., even though he did not know anything or the coolness that attenuates him indistinctly from the Bern-Time that was frolicking in his emotional cover, making him feel such hypothetical compunction at realizing a deadly thread. His life mechanics hesitantly fell off V.V.'s lectern. Gogh, developing in un concretized models with singular embarrassments that have not yet stopped in its squalid rind, on the way to uncovering and then imagining knowing whose it is or was, knowing that no precedent would model its sensation of hyper-Ouzo, aggravated with maledicence in his space Bern-Time, and surrounded by his **** hysteria coming out of the bellows of his veins and ferocious ******, singing to cruel people who laughed with great art for whoever challenged him and concentrated his sorcerer's trick. Ferocious evil devils were still in their remnants rolling through some cracks that ask to circulate in Florence, in Tuscany among some Diavolo with multiform cosmogony, "Possibly reliving" that has decayed from himself, and resorting to himself to facilitate the last parallelism of the variable molecule and lung protervo balanced in grim expansive hopes by validating him..., perhaps of a false revival. From here he will have to absorb himself with hepatic gargles, and seriously insulted desires as he gets drunk from the unknown universe, pretending to decipher the encrustations on his back full of particles that were hidden in residues without mass or gravitations, overestimating the heart that hangs from a hedonistic Longines and from a mischievous ending outlined towards the woods of Hylates longing for him. His verses are confused with ailments and consciences without trace or trace or firmament that remains ephemeral before closing the cousin Lux that was passing in front of In a Gadda Da Vida, whose symbol is the one who outlines it in darkness highlighting his metaphorical soul intangible solemnity and portraying his adolescent face that dozes under the attentions of his ascendants, removing intemperances, and prophetic doping that was torturing and invading him on the fold of Alikantus's haunches when he was annoyed that his own steed would carry him in his arms resting on his disturbed property endorsed in an equine Hoplite. Its iconology is and will be in the hexagonal baptistery of Ein Karem, solfa templar choirs and choirs that thunder from the spawn of the sheaves to a sanctuary that nothing calms in infinite and allegorical deities with tortuous moratoriums enduring the resistance of the obtuse sprains of the ineffable.

Vernarth Antithetical to an Auric medal, it rested superimposed on his arms, wrapped in well-tempered cymbals, nourished by turpentine allied with Ouzo caramel, minced after thick Hellenic toasts when they began to perpetuate themselves with sagacious heretical attacks and narcissistic bravery as they went cloistering himself in maturity that dressed in an imposed narrow law fame, which was expiring under immutable and succulent decrees perched on the same aphrodite in love with himself. Meanwhile, Vernarth stocked up on medallions chained to garments of happiness they were inscribed with precise digits and sighs that would name him as Vernarth, "Son of Sisyphus perhaps", the guru of pending conclaves and hesitations "Here is who I spoke of allowing him to delight in named feat and with trivial branches in plunges that were varying in the spheres that were degenerating into heavy lightness towards their alter confusion. He bites the line of a comet falling on him, knowing that the Sotíras or Sóter has done penance within it that will not let him sleep on the motionless stars. Unstable from a primordial advance, then starting from the worst chaos that could have engulfed Vernarth In Aeternum. From this adolescent temptation that will launch meteorites and elegies at the castle of his courtship, telling him to remain confined in the solidity that he will postpone for other winters and the same passages that will make him come from the northern *****. The sweet necropolis would then light up by not being lost among the living, rather by the fallen who would have to seek the living among the fallen to help them and reciprocate between nearby verses by resurrecting them from In Aeternum…, seducing them from his active life! Vernarth denies coming and going along the aforementioned hillside with his courted delay... she will have to remove his dagger from his wrists, more or less restricting soporific arteriosus threads, smoothing the scaphoid and pyramidal, permeating with tender fire and playful irrational object "instigate In Aeternum to my onerous mind, whose world map and impolite split in the valleys of Berna-Universal..., as Adonis planted that was perceived in agreed cycles,... only by alternating his instigations..."

In æternum Auream Consecratam, Vernarth defoliated after the axis mundi and exaltation of the Bern-Universe world, encrypting in the engravings of all the memories of the Harpies, even in their finished archetypal capital where they moved through the midst of trunks cosmogonic footsteps and of the gods with spare hearts in frank wandering architecture, rebuilding themselves with new gods of consecrated aura. The party continued with decreed dialogue and continued with the medallion on the drag chain that went under the draft of the ship indicating the message to verify and rest in the preciousness of one who can balance his man's maneuverability with his Lynothorax open to the world so that Zeus in this day of utilitarian morality makes it part of his infinite use, but with orderly practical use. In this proportion, St. John the Apostle warns him of the sighting of Cape Koumbournous, approaching Prassonissi, not far from these two appears the third, Karpathos, all this limited to the south of Rhodes in the concordant uniform of his entire work, transforming integrally according to the conception of St. John for the predicaments of maximizing the weight of his alliance with Vernarth; now converted into a dogmatic designer, placing Gnomic poetry to help his memory. For all the themes of wisdom and conversion in each stone on another with a liturgy of construction of the temple that extended them to Patmos, in intelligence biblical verse was explaining the versed maxims converted from the prior cadence of poems in sequence, and legacies of stanzas of wolves that save lives to their hunters with prosaic testimonies delivered in hilarious argumentative eagerness, but not transgressing the expository towards Bernese-Hellenic poetry, with rhythm and cadence of the hours of the day that the centuries do without questioning its cyclical beauty, although I walk on it in a drama of lost revelry.

Saint John says: “The maxims, aphorisms, and apothegms will be where they differ from their charm like the beloved fugitive that Werther awaits from Goethe, like Vernarth, threatened by his madness to escape from the harpies emitting in his apothegm “His intensity is neither worthy nor irritable, but abhorrent." Vernarth is detested by large masses of clones of war comrades who make their apothegm young death in the hands of abhorrent old age, which falls into trends of compromising verses, and circumstantial that require doses of Ouzo on those levels of the classic apothegm, seated on a Klismós with a bald and contoured ***** on the four legs of Vetrubio, and a backing of light Rembrandt being born of all equal synchronicities at the dawn of a preceded and pseudo-literature, which more than letters will be retractable symbols of his bellicose artistic memory that bears of the tabulator of its reflective collections, leaving divine blood in the claws of the Griffin that slices blood of vermin that bind the light with its red pupils, like Werther and Vernarth swallowing the divine gesture that differentiates from those who are not prey to the erratic intensity of the wolf wise, who pursues his prey beyond cold and hunger, finely leaving his victim between nearby hooks and his neighbors Garfed Family members making enemies of natural blood relatives. Here is every part of our challenge in every listless use that is consistent with our entire works since the trade winds put us in the best climatic emotional mode, towards those who live on the food of wisdom more distant than the ignorant fools, but rather for those who they make their species our own variety in good moments that will be intense, but nothing that we cannot moderate with this greatness of small lux, but with great expressive mechanics dissecting interstices and remains of sediments that will remain for us to reassemble with public voices a Messiah as a great speaker, even with nubile apothegms that do not allow to be portrayed. We are sailing here slowly with the force of the blows that drag us to the Koumbournou cape, we can look at the highest peak that can be seen, being devoured by our own expectation that makes us go beyond what we thought we could achieve as a founding prize in the new religious laws that we have to refound, after the phylogeny of Olivos Berna. Not only does the Greek landscape manifest itself to us with the mythical laws to re-study them, but they also make them possible with our overseas proximities on cliffs that fill us with courageous courage towards one end of the stranded ship heeling upward, and towards the lavish waves that speak of coasts and white waters on the same waves that sang denominated in verses of the renewed goddess Hera, and who are related by a hero like Vernarth glorified. Neither illustrious nor villainous, but an aristocrat of Nymphs, Muses, Harpies, and Hesperides taking the sun deck with them in the Eurydice triaconter, stripped of benefits to the one who is just beginning to rule over him with his pious song. ”

The Vernarth-Werthian Tragedy was crossing the overseas challenges of Koumbournou, witnessing before his eyes the storms and effects of the intensity of an adult youth with his apothegm “My intensity is neither worthy nor irritable, but it is abhorrent”. But of Werthian scope, with the intention of competing with all the leaders of the courtship and of the sources of its antiquity similar to one more degraded of charm, leaving those who love and those who have been bewitched by all those who have been abandoned by adhesions of love unrequited. Cycles of horrors over the ship expelled the worst that made the ship list with rattles from Vernarth's gouges that made three-dimensional the superfluous darkness of the birch that was anointed on the mainmast, causing populated voices from minor to major near the Koumbournou cape. Certain temperamental harpies perversely wooed him from high to the freest confines of the scale of sarcastic incantation and countless love affairs. He is forced to witness his own indomitable fictions with an adorable room in the peasants where the harpies and their corsets licked the bobbins of some tonal hypocoristic words, contrary to the euphemistic of his apothegm that bordered on the most abhorrent apocalyptic when he found it in his practices mental manipulators and in the fictitious reality of loving beautiful women who do not correspond to those who love them! They knew this interdict that is hidden in the pavilion of some rockeries that hit the doublets of the minor harpies presenting themselves to everyone in the skylights of the sky, which were overshadowed by contested intimacy since they could not correspond to the final linguistic sounds of the lipped apothegm, adjoining in full love and colorful operatic stillness. Vernarth continues with his gouges inscribing his name and the name of his harpy that would finally rid him of ****** ailments. Arhanis; the harpy looked at herself in three glasses simultaneously, giving Vernarth sorrow for the attachment that escaped through the hiding places of the matrix fairies with delirium tremens when they submerged themselves under the decorated breaths of the floripondium that lingered from the totemic censer, recomposing itself in an incomplete wagon with areas of hydro-monoxide heaps overheating and producing viscosities, smearing his chest and mouth in the vortex as he softens the flow spilled by warm lightning rods in each abandonment, while nothing consoled him when everyone attended to them to overcome his catatonic course. The ursids who embraced the females would be outraged by his laziness, and the hopes of finding them would take them to the shore of Aphrodite with her final dirge defragmented and out of tune. Werther, with obvious elegy, appears with essences and disappeared in anxiolytic body parts. Werther says: “Here is Koumbournou, here is Wahlheim where our docks would still like to house rising boats that cut their bows and keels leaving each other in nothingness. Both pontoons would kiss in their death locked up near the In Aeternum, adjacent to the openwork where the auric medallion grieved. For the first time before committing suicide I saw that the heavy doors that led me to Lotte were opening, letting joy fall on my eyes, being the harpy that every female bears with a name similar to the one who fills her cup with desire and vanity. The harpies whimpered with their bellies full of harsh tears, asking Vernarth for two harpoons from the coarse cellophane of the flimsy sea of her soul, still standing before him dressed as a Werthian organism. Until the Panagia Ipseni, the monastery of Rhodes, cries of projectiles were felt that crossed each other in the swift flight of the desires of the immolation of both, whose ballad melted the rows, tying themselves to two naves like bushes grafted onto the hands of the suicide's executioner. The one who speaks here is entangled in Lotte's glottis, still alive to ******, and he calls me with eagerness and regrets my death in the whole world, not for my Werthian love for her. Vernarth says Werther, this rots me with uneasiness, I let myself fall into its obscenities to decay from Lotte's apnea, which is still in all those who suffer when two harpoons cross for the same destiny..., the victim chooses the first " Says Lotte: "Even after the Vernarthian time, both who dare a rude hostility as a way of harpooning doubt and who are not prone to suicide, it is that hope itself sweetly lingers in the one who receives the wound that bears my name..., that of Werther that grapples with the spur of the Eurydice, and that of Wernarth that crosses paths before both of us were lost in the midst of oblivion. I am still in Wahlheim, but I give birth to those who in the evenings after the bells still come to claim my destiny, perhaps their tragic destiny was taken by the princess Eurymedusa who will take them to Rhodes and Patmos, following the path of the myrmidons between them whom I envy and the princess herself loving him in her Rhodes prose”

to my long deceased mom...
Harriet Harris née Kuritsky

My mother succumbed to a terminal illness
two score minus three orbitz passed away
no matter she fought tooth and nail
to keep ovarian/uterine cancer at bay
disease metastasized throughout major organs,
hence demise found grim reaper to carry
her Bag of Bones into The Dead Zone -
where Misery loves company
Four Past Midnight
well nigh seventeen
and a half years ago to the day
thus a flash in a bedpan idea flit
thru me mind setting task at hand
to forego bidding on eBay

and ruminate how she felt
knowing her end to be near, -
where her psyche did flay
with anger writhing at the injustice
to ****** thee lover of life
her deadened flesh became ashen gray
yet, a recurring memory
replays in my mind,
whereby this ordinarily
sole sunny trooper
blackened hole within her sons' psych
doth feebly booster morale
with a lame duck uttered hay
huzzah, but flashback to last moment

I saw mother, yet
merely stood mute in close proximity
within the kitchen of thee predominant
century old mansion stone
built home donned with English ivy
once glorious complex edifice
sans domicile razed
no stone left unturned
remains longer only in me noggin
twittering memories flutter
and tweet like a blue jay
keeping visage intact
the house (formerly known as Glen Elm)
at 324 level road,

Collegeville, Pennsylvania -
amazed at my ability to recall an okay
dough key mixed meadow
for with many emotions arising
from where siblings
and me did blessedly play
our oasis, a rural route number 2 -
or rd2 for short a constituent key
per our residence, which like a quay
Tsar seemed light years
removed from civilization,
a remnant tract of idyllic ray

dee hance, upon with open space slated
to become outfitted
and transformed into an urban stay
shin for mobile Americans hopscotching
as short term owners of a new home they
never knew what fractious
mother-son trials and tribulation,
now invisibly harbored and enshrined
forever pristine sanctuary
denominated secular way
down deep in thy conscious, which access
to retrieve nada so

excellent circumstances of youth
(oftimes meditating while dwelling
upon expansive roof
many an outlook raised)
on par with hop, jump,
or skipping to Uruguay
but nothing can recreate
and make real one again
deconstructed house where dwelt pangs
of pre and post adolescence
no matter I mouth
and soundlessly mutter oy vey
till the cows come home,

cuz the days of boyhood,
teenage and emerging adulthood
(matter of fact, this heir -
overstayed his welcome)
accentuated courtesy corrosive
contumely contretemps
thus ambivalent feelings
doth owe way
kin this day of the month
every year the aura, charisma,
and persona delighting like galena zany
persona, thine late mother of pearl

and milk of human kindness
yes, this cingular male offspring doth miss
when he gives pause (all faux),
thus aye scrawl this poetic mini opus
knowing full well,
ye will never be cognizant,
but cathartic to press
any black key (on this laptop)
and expunge thru
Times New Roman font size 12
discombobulated words

buffeted bitta bing bitta bang
in situ jewel flowing emotions
akin to Rapunzel unfurling long tress
buffeted by the war wren inside mine being
for love unspoken, I confess
and tis thru fatherhood
(which beautiful granddaughters
ye would marvel) despite obloquy
when ye and papa de address
me in harsh terms, but objectionable traits
wove within mein kampf DNA less

or more, and angst riddled
body, mind and spirit
rent asunder with emotional duress
essentially encoded within
the twisted sisterly chromosome strands
that wrought Matthew Scott Harris,
now the boss and master
of his own psychological domain,
whereat he closes with mum --
I feel terrible ye got angry and cross!

From a germinated seed,
to an acorn that escaped a
Winter Squirrel, this plant
became a shrub, then grew
onwards to become a tree.

The problem with it was,
that unlike the conifers in
the forest (all supporting
each other), the Oak was
arrogantly independent.

Every leaf was a dollar bill,
rich canopies under which
prosperity and security was
protected from extremes of
heat or excessive downpours.

Oh, how blessed I am it said:
to have so much wealth at my
twig tips, whenever I want it
is only a matter of shaking my
branches and money descends

Autumn came, dyes changed
those denominated notes
began to loose their hue, then a
hurricane blew them all away
to the floor of the pine forest.

The money tree stood bare, no
protection from the icy winds
or the Siberian snow, it was
desolate but found some solace
being lower than the pine wood.