National Poetry Day Celebration

This is a few weeks late, but the reading at The Mercury Cafe on 4/28 went very well. There were some terrific artists sharing their work and before you knew it, three hours had flown out the door and down Chicago Avenue never to be seen again. Until next year's celebration. Here were my humble contributions :

CHICAGO

in Chicago
there are souls
who pass for
a sack of pennies
and honeybees
that dance on
the tip of a match

I've seen water rise
to the concrete edge
where men sleep with
dreams tucked
into their boots

safe from the newspaper saviors
who wave at the traffic

in Chicago
we have mercy
on our tongue like rain
strikes the oak and marble
of Grant Park

like snow calms
the fever of LaSalle Street

as the wind jumps
from C to C-sharp
all the way down Ogden Ave.
where geniuses in basements
shatter the light
in twelve different pieces

redemption must be coming
and it should be thick
in the tall grass
under the L-tracks by now

the lost songs of
Maxwell St. could return
roaring over the playgrounds and
bus-stops shaking Amens
from the unforgiven

or in between
the three-flats
where the city warms its hands
over a burning book of proverbs.


STICK-MEN

the stick-men are following
me around again

as the sun erupts over Lake Michigan
in a thousand Nagasaki blossoms
lighting another chance
at a day's worth of disaster

they say give it up
you're a laughingstock in wet clothes
and the kids are throwing rocks

as the breeze sweeps in
on paratrooper boots
lifting scent and memory
from their rightful place

they say you haven't got it
never did and
the serpents are counting the minutes

as music feathers down from a balcony
teasing the heart
with a lover's lost whisper

as bullies rush the playground
kicking over the chessboard
and laughing at the sprawl of
bloody noses and
stained shirts

they say quit right now
you are the pitiful shape
of a blank soul

as an elderly woman
shares her can of tuna
with an alley cat
scared and lonely as she is
grateful for the company

the stick-men say nothing

and I say
FUCK YOU.


THE COUNTER

a six-pack of
12 oz. beers
one pint of tequila
and
a
single
red
tomato

she sets on the counter
before handing a twenty
to the clerk and
searching her purse again

i have the 41 cents
she promises him

and me
and everyone else
watching this pixie-cut
daydream in grey-hooded flannel
and purple nail-polish

in a spin i wonder
where she is going
maybe to her boyfriend's
or a party
or to the end of my imagination

and i think of
what we might do with that tomato

top off a salad
to share from a china plate
found in a thrift store

toss at a picture
of the bastard who broke her heart

set in a windowsill
facing south
absorbing another day's sunlight
for tomorrow's ideas

or balance on my head
for Mexican target practice
like Burroughs did
but this time
the girls win

and maybe i deserve it
because she is twenty years younger
and lovely in a way i can
only admire from the balcony

pixie-cut hair
shamble of cotton and flannel
off the shoulder with
cheap sneakers and
purple nail-polish
what the hell am i thinking

she probably thinks Boz Skaggs
was a porn star

i am so fucked

and this is so doomed
except for the possibility
that she is drinking alone tonight
as I am too.

cheers.