Hello Chicago
Flat carpet-town of corn meal
steel spears at the northern junction
of Cahokia and some unknown dream

No lillies grow here sir,
no tulip fields
though there are many Dutch
a little up north
Wisconsin, dontcha' know?

Family blood rains through the Chicago river
named of the blood of a slain tribal wonder
wanders
with the roaming buffalo

I sat at the top of Sears
(Willis)
Tower and peered into the foggy distance
and made out the shores of Michigan
through Indiana
the leftover rains of a continental freeze
churned the earth to butter and carved the arteries
and bowels
of today's earthly body

And when we drove in from O'Hare
in the late hours on incessant stoplight highways
counting down the streets
thinking maybe they'll go all the way to
Mississippi
just a long row of
Concrete

I saw the brick tower
of a decrepit Frito-lay plant
where they cooked their corn and potato
into succulent
can't eat just one
little snacks

for the whole of america
to enjoy in backyard barbecues
and convenience stores
and grocery outlets
All across the planet

Now with the trucks they come and go
up to and whizzing past Chicago
on to greener states with greater relief
with hills and lakes and winding streams

Different sections of the sculpture
Cities eroding into the pleasant coasts
quaking and breaking into tiny stones
a monumental David
cracked in the gallery
bird **** corroding the silicates
unpolished and immortal
words

Chicago!
oh you mighty city you
built from sod and sweat and dew
of new morning
I see your towers
you dreamer, you
But your towers are in Dubai,
and Shanghai
now

The world moved on
and forgot everything about
that magnificent mile
burned to make you earn
new toys and fancy things
from far beyond your winding river streams

But you didn't die
amazing, how much they tried
to rust you out
to bleed you dry

no,
Chicago,
you keep your ***** rivers flowing
all the way to the Mississippi
flanked by modern Roman concrete
all the way to the great green sea
out into the puddle that surronds
the Amerigo

Chicago
don't you give up that river dream

The air is burly
trees harvest soldiers on the line
combines, threads, manure, life--
A whole world lost amidst the flats

Saplings are the next season's
Almonds, Apples, Dates,
Waiting for food shelves and stockrooms
packed in banana boxes and given a place
They will find the plates of capitol city dwellers
They will be engorged far away from their origins

The Sierra-- oh the great plutonic mass
They are grey from age, peppered with white whiskers of snow
They are asking to be known as the interior

Pilgrims who traveled over their spines, seeking these fertile swampland
Now airstrips and dirigibles

The edges of clouds on the valley, the deserts and the mountains like folds of a book
they crackle in the sun and the skin of the earth shrinks in its gaze

Migratory birds dance in the fields, the lowly clang of bell
Bleached american flags tell us this is the land

The land of things and endless breadth

This is only California, but the majesty of it
a gem valley encased by the rocks, in silicates
A roaming place for cows, wanderers, farmers, dreams

Where the only edge of things is the mountains, saying
-Climb me, surmount me, lay me under your deeds-

Meteors are made of three components
Iron, nickel and silicates
You are made of something simpler
Sea salt, angst and
Tenderness

Yet my fingers always fall short
Of reaching you
But if you did ever let me caress the space
Between us
Not just in our lips

You’d come crashing down
Bursting in a kaleidoscope of flames
Orange and silver sparks flying
And I would still hold on
Even if you take me with you.

the odorless aluminum man pit, in my face...

ah, m'body,
meet m'mind wandering, re
turning from gravity
de-if-icating

****-is-this-ity to now. ifity, if you, we,
have, inhabit, time
to stretch, to live
slowly easy,
no umph,
ah, sigh,
the point of being embodied at all is what,

exactly? Exactly right.
we be
we know
we grow in knowing sequences
- points of light -
of imaginable numbers reasoning words
taken as granted re
ality,

- those are Space-ex's, ignor'em
- those are not natural, yet
we imagine we were,
then this
this very then
this's then that's
mine then yours, see. First me,
then this body in my service, finally finishing

its being, as I lie remembering I remembered
to brush my teeth,
rub aluminum silicates on my arm pit where
my nose is stuck,

ah. no pain. no smell. I think
I broke my neck,
but that was a wrong thought, tested only
for the time taken to think it,
testing times are never wasted, be not

deceived. Received truth can't become untrue.

Awake to a strange bugging nag
A tick of thought nestled between
The dripping seconds that sway my fate
And thus, the world-- for men we stay

I crawl to silent rocky planes
endeared to noting but silicates
with blood I christen their timeless face
With this flesh of mortal deviate

And soon my bones will give you pause,
my blood will pool,
my skin pale, taught and gauze

yet where you stay, alone from life,
my soul will rise

To endless light

To end this night

there is a skeleton of an idea
born from some barely formed imagination
abducted from its incubation
and slammed into the dirt
under layers and layers
it fossilizes
and bone becomes crystal
and silicates abound
and the impression is ripped from the ground
paraded amongst the public
strung up and put on show
but what has happened to the flesh and sinew?