Chicago, 2/04/2007

CHICAGO, 2/04/07









I can feel the soil. Feel the bone fragments and broken glass decomposed wood splinters in the dirt gripping at my fingertips. The skin’s recoil as my heart thumping quickly and deadened pupils as big as saucers.

Planes fly overhead. Fuselage colored like the moon and smooth as amber.

Rising skyhigh are the bruised waspnest buildings. Balconies shuddering from paroxysmal tears of refuse. They palpitate with warmlike heartsickness. The clouds are hazy today and made of charred brown centipede shell sails swerving past blinding choking peat-fires. Pimp enjoys a cappuccino on the concrete park bench.

I’ve got my head bowed and my pinky-finger in my coat’s inside pocket.

“Need a woman?”

“No. I need to go.”

My heart thunders at it falls. As it falls. Falling like stones thudding on my shoulders it begins to rain slow and delirious as cold exposure. There is no thunder: the imitation is ambiguous. They’ll bury my bones there. No ossuary outside the city. I love no one. There is nothing but longing. Longing senseless that wastes your bones as the cold invades and makes a home. Host. Tied by tethers on a 41st floor window he hangs and blows in the wind. Detritus ankle deep in the curbside reservoirs of gravel water. Scalps flapping in the wind from flagpoles.

  Winding like a thick serpent the river stinks of flesh and concrete.