L.A. Bound...and Frowning

                    Morning glorious & Pacific time zone bright shining across the bluest sky hed ever stared at before without a blink. The iron express that roars cold upon the rails of injunction throughout the southwest slander & adobe smiles of mileage tracked up & down the sternum of America.

             He gazes through the window at cloudless visions of mountain sand & cacti-kissing bandits portraying the old western vaudeville of shoot em up showdowns displayed against an old time picture show double featuring The Corduroy Cowboy with six strings-a-blazin & burnin down the hot time in cow town tonight! YAHOO!! You could hear that locomotive hauling along, atop the entire state of mind & finding himself a few minuets outside of Albuquerque, en rout, to the sunshine sewers of California.

 

             L.A. bound & frowning.

 

             The Amtrak railed its way down the line, slowin time down upon the break of day, winding its cars tragically into the station for a 20 minuet stopover. Hes seen Albuquerque before from a different pair of eyes back in his youth & only recalls the good times. His present vision was a bit bleary that particular rise & shine.

             He arose in his seat. Shook about the cobwebs & such & gave a good rub to the bloodshot of dilated retinas, scratching the shadow on his jaw & yawned the dawning of another day wasted. Feeling the slowdown of the train car halting into its cradle to rest, letting him straighten his spine inside the morning chill of New Mexico.

            On the other side of the glass he starred up to the sky again. He raised his arms to stretch. The age of his bones began to creek. He removed his hat & scratched his fingers against the grain of his skull as his reality began to speak in code & the debt that he owed to that somebody special who began to rhyme the left side of his memory gland with somber tones & sobriety striking. Fast.

            He began to look around. Spying his view, shifty, from side to side, drifting his head in the same sense of fashion in the wee hours of the A.M. swift kick in the a*s & at last, he began to think.

           "Why the almighty f**k am I in Albuquerque?" he exclaimed unto himself with a slapstick pound to his forehead & the dead humor that surrounds him like an entourage of yes men, name droppers, hanger oners, bottom feeders, midnight Calhouns, high viper mad men, draft dodgers & Jolly Rodgers, Hollywood hangmen & the dribble-drabble babble of an old w***e with shotgun suck jobs & superfifiscal forget me nots. He took a step back to frame this picture he has embedded in his brain of a snow frost skyscraper towering above his drink & spatted on & on in some kind of stanza about his obsessive love for his Windy City blues & a Michigan Avenue that hollers up & down every block of its magnificent mile wide smile that he already began to miss.

             He thumbed into his dusty denim for a quarter or maybe a buck to make some. He had very little pockets to speak of but managed to make change out of a few weathered Washingtons & wandered over to the phone booth.

             He removed his coat & fished around for a cigarette to burn. Lighting it poetically like a tire fire. He fed the machine the silver, dialed her number & let it ring like the bells of forewarning Redcoats. He inhaled his cancer & blew the smoke up to the heavens. & after a few more rings, she finally answered.

             He took a second or two to gather the thoughts hes been having for the past thousand miles or so. She spoke in central-mountain time. Maybe over a mid morning coffee she drank predictably. Perhaps her eyes were as red as his. Perhaps a bit more damp.

           "Hello?" she answered with an ease of unexpectedness. The dead air silence felt like a pine box.

           "Hellooo?" she again exaggerated.

           "Hey darlin' it's me." he breathed. This time the dead air silence felt more like the moment just before a pine box.

           "Darlin are ya there?"

           "Yeah." She exhaled.

           "Um...Ijust pulled into the station in Albuquerque...& Iwell I just wanted to call you."

           "Gee thanks." She spoke with a detected hint of sarcasm, followed by more silence.

          " Yeah, well...well ya see darlin'... I had this dream last night. Um...it was about you & me. Well, it wasn't about you & me, it was about you, me & Chicago." He paused for a moment, Are you still on the line?"

            "Um Hum."

            "Well ya see darlin',"  he took another drag from his Marlboro Red, "ya see, you of course looked absolutely adorable. I, of course, looked kinda tattered, & Chicago...well, Chicago looked far away. Especially from the west."

              He heard her light her own cigarette & inhaled the expectance of another long drabble of deluded conversation. But she couldnt hang up. She still loved him.

            "Well...ya see darlin', you were wearing your Wabash smile as wide as the day is long. & in Chicago, that can be a dangerous thing. We were together see, drinking at Cals Liquors, grabbing a sixer to go, & it was late, & we staggered onto Van Buren heading towards Grant Park & we were giggling like school children when we stopped out side the Metra Station & we saw the first flakes fall from the sky. & the Sears Tower just towered above us as if to tell us that there will be no worries that night, for, she will be our guardian & see to it that we will be protected in the caress of The Loop & all the fears & all the tragedies & all the bullshit that coincides with existence, will be thwarted by the mighty stance it casts over this city. & as I looked in your eyes, the Kimball roared over head, five, maybe six cars long. But it was just long enough to fall for you & pull your lips to mine & kiss you with every amount of heart I had left to give. & I gave it all to you." he took another drag, "Are you still there?"

           "Yes"

            "Do you remember that dream darlin?"

            "Yeah...but things got a little hazy after smoking that roach with the Street Wise guy on State Street."

            "Ah yes," he started again "yeah...State Street. Lit up neon moaning moon shining down. Streetlamps dressed in wreathing ribbons & bows & saxophones caroling, serenading State & Washington & the storefronts read us the story of Christmas & a reindeer ride around the looping Linden. We were killin cans every block & a half. We reached the Chicago Theater & were blinded by its carnival illumination. We chugged the last of our beers in the alley behind the Cultural Center & found some romantically secluded space between the dumpsters & kissed again. Furiously. Your eyes were like a thousand Decembers that winter. I never wanted the summer heat. I never wanted the beach. I never wanted the 97-degree mornings standing atop the Belmont platform drenched in hangover sweat waiting anxiously for the Howard/95^th! That damn train only brought me halfway to you!"

            "Yeah, when you needed me." She butted in with that damn impeccable timing she displays like a gift from the gods.

             He smoked the last drag of his cigarette & stomped it out on the station floor, rubbed his brow & wiped the greasy locks from his eyes & gathered himself once again.

           "Yeah...well...as I was saying, we finished kissing, but we didn't move. We just stood therein each others armsin complete silence. & Chicago was functioning all around us as it always did, was & will. Forever. Maybe the Sears Tower was right. Maybe there are no fears. Maybe there are no tragedies. Maybe there is no bullshit that coincides with this damned existence. It was all about existing with you. You, me & Chicago! It's coasts of gold tenderness, it's Lincoln Park appetite, it's Ravenswood cradle, it's Old Town trickle, it's Wrigleyville ivy, it's South Loop debauchery, it's China Town, it's Buck Town, it's parks of Wicker, it's ghost town stockyards, it's Fulton markets, it's John Handcock, written elegantly, 95 stories atop the dotted line of Michigan Avenue, it's Chess record, drank with a three fingered shot of Muddy Waters, it's Blue line train, it's Red line train, it's Brown line, it's Orange line, it's Green & Purple all stretched out across it's skeleton like veins pulsating it's Delmark jazz into the midnight sky! & we stumbled, arm in arm, all the way to Grant Park & wrapped ourselves in its virgin blanket of frost."

          "You know theres no snow in southern California." She said.

          "Ahh, thats an understatement." I answered comedicly. She didnt even chuckle. She probably didnt even blink. She probably didnt even think we'd ever speak again.

The silence still loomed. I could hear her inhale another drag. & after a long exhale, she spoke.

         " What exactly are you getting at?"

 

 

11/30/97 - Westbound

 

 

A sad state of affairs

inflicting chaos amongst the tension of your mind & your tortoise vision

blanketed bankruptcy from behind your smiling eyes

your punch & your howling anger

twice removed from the excuse of my b*****d child ways

it's not so much the scolding, but the part after

that shreds my insides out

even now, as I'm writing, I could swear I see you standing there

I just cant reach you

funny how things dont change much.

down the rigged tracks of broken hope

reading my redeeming voice of alphabetic jumble

meaning only nothing in the world in which I breath

the harrowing darkness drawing heavier in my time of departure

losing all my sights & sounds of your heart & my home

(which, as every minuet passes, they seem to be one of the same)

envious of normality

I travel at will, discarding the milage & the reckless passion

I've known & loved

trying to find the obstructed pieces of shattered buoyancy

which makes up this god damn puzzle of life

taken too much for granted

not really calculating the mathematics of ensembles & wretched scenes

that put me in that damp place of down time

& a more curious vision of thought

& its more or less you I think of

 

For the games of dames before we were born

backhanded my fear & insecurities

deepening my withdrawal of the caring kind

& a forthright common sense

of betrayal & emotional starvation

heightening my potential of poetic bliss

 

the part you love so well

 

I gaze outward at the mirrored plains of old glory

& try to anticipate a brighter oncoming

a possible sustain in life

& quite possibly, someone else who understands it also

 

so I let the warmth of the western sun

wash up against my shores

& sink deep into the values of drowning

in its headstrong polarity

 

 

P.S.    I do love you darlin.

        

          I just dont know how to yet.