A day in Chicago

193 miles from Chicago

I lapse into a sleep that is disturbed

by familiar noise, a note breaking into laughter

another stressing importance of a conversation, muted to fit a bus

of half-sleeping passengers buoying through streets

pilled with burnt-out corn-canes spelling autumn

the other half buried under leather jackets, sharing size M&Ms

side chatter, side flatter, side flirtations

I wake up on the edge of the city

imagining- for a second-

that my thighs will transform into a graphic of a cartoon

these are the images that come with skyscrapers

on the loop, I look up, there's a sky

that is clear blue, passengers in the bus rising

for the click of the shutter

I fail at making mine, an understanding of those clicking away time

I have read it is husky and brawling

like a dog's demand for food from strangers

but the city doesn't demand much of me,

gives me food, a bed, images of the day and night

gives me time to comb my hair

time to choose my pan-cake sides

to ponder about a simple choice between

walking and running, between a crowd and my shadow

I run Michigan Avenue

without checking how a man's open festering

sores are his only defense against the ill winds

of the city, of the trail of a look from foot to knee

when I pause to look up I see it

the point where the sky meets the buildings

without objection they fit together:

man made towers to reach God, God made rivers to reach man

I race art for a feeling, between Monet

Warhol, Picasso are enough disasters

with smeared colors erupting in a second

blues, for sadness, lilies for health, greens for happiness

on the boat he tells me

it was called shikaakwa by the Indian who before the skyscraper

tried to reach the gods by the longest staffs in his tipi

never thinking that the staff would learn to bend on his back

a nomad is a nomad is a nomad and you cannot change

how we reach the skies in our own methods

but he also said that some stones of the city

were gathered, like the scattered fruits of earth

from the four corners of the universe

to reside in this very city, make a sky-line

for watchers, visitors, eaters of priced meals

thinkers across the green water of the Chicago river

he says a lot of things and I listen quietly

it is better if I don't open my mouth

later at night, I pass by the classic signs

of love. Two hands intertwined

a horse drawn carriage

a night that descends to clear way on loner beds

on top of a tower I see night falling over the city

alone, tilting over hundreds of passing cars

no one stops the traffic to see a head near a skyscraper's window

no one says I love you with a bright lit tower in the background

at eleven p.m. the towers look the same

the river, tepid water runs along

on the banks you think of the words of origin

chicagwaa, at some point meant Garlic

a name so small for a city

so big. Why garlic? hoarders for witches

devil devil go away,

devil devil here you stay

cries the nomad who took a staff, hammered it to earth

then said: this is home

one more time you think of  his words:

how a great fire made the way on both sides of water

how you want to tell him that fire knows how to jump a river

if it intends to burn but remain awfully silent, for reasons beyond you.

nighttime Chicago, taken with Iphone 5 camera