Be Good

August 31st, 2015
Chicago, IL

"Be Good"

The West Loop stretches out
     Like a pool of brick and steel
          gathering around the base of the city.
The wind whips down
     wet and sharp,
And everybody's pushing through it,
Plowing their way through the weather
     like a ponderous crowd.
As it is,
The crowds are thin,
     gaunt 'n single walkers with their eyes
          two feet up their umbrellas.
Wet-eyed men and women
     flit back and forth beneath the tracks,
Dipping into alcoves,
Slipping into burrows warm with coffee,
     heat,
          and chittering with conversation.

By Green Street,
     just a jump East of Morgan Station,
An age eaten woman curls beneath a jutting pillar of steel,
     shooting up to hold the platform.
She's wrapped in a wet blanket,
     humming to herself.
Above her head,
Scrawled on the column
     like a haunting smile,
          with that Cheshire Cat feeling,
Some kind of Crayola crayon wrote,

     "be
          good"

The woman shiver with the tracks
     as the trains roar into the city.

Tweet

August 24th, 2015
Chicago, IL

"Tweet"

I like to twitter!
I'm a blue-eyed,
Yellow Jay.

I tweeter,
Twitter tweet,
Twitter tweet twitter.

Mindless
Tweeter tweets,

Joyful
Twitter tweet,
Twit twit tweets,

Sorrowful
Tee tweet,
twee,
tees.

In a great school of raptors,
Eagles and falcons
Thrumming through the sky,
Beautiful birds
Pooled into giant clouds of color,
I tweet twitter and tee twitter,
     Humming along,
Making it up on the fly
     when I don't know the tune.

I like to twitter,
Because
I like the sound of the forest's
     moonlit canopy.