When You're Lost In The Rain In Jaurez

they sat together in the park
as the evening sky grew dark

there's somethin in those two lines. somethin like the patience it takes to really watch a sunset. somethin like holdin hands for the first time with someone you love or at the very least pretty damn sure. somethin like knowin that everthing is gonna be ok. somethin like that which doesn't happen all too often and not enough.

i pick off the hours like a sniper at a half click out.

and i smell the smoke in my hair, smoke from another fire i set alight, hot oil on the coals and incense in the blood - this ain't holy service and it ain't whole no not while somethin's missin and not while somethin's amiss.

i contemplate the droppin of my g's and realize that doin so is another false somethin but recognizin that voice out of the ether makes me remember that i do come from somewhere and somewhere is where i'll one day be.

how long will i be ridin?
how long must i keep my eyes glued to the door?
will there be any comfort there, señor?

i was once told that home is a place worth dyin. i didn't believe it for the longest of time, and i still don't know that i do and fully, but i can say for certain that i've finally come to the point of understandin. i've finally come to the point of knowin that home ain't just somethin imagined, ain't just somethin pulled from nothin. home is a place worth waitin for. even if it ain't never gonna come.

music of children pulls me out but only just for a moment. a switch to the next to hear the soft tones of french into the most american of english puts me back on track. just a quarter past four minutes is all it lasts, but if i had my druthers i'd stay there indefinitely. but there it is, the soft blueglow of sunrise pokin through trees in front of what i currently call home, so i s'pose that means the end of one more ramblin.

i'm at the end of a rope that i didn't even know was there 'til i was nearin the end. but ain't that how it goes?

when i was sittin in front of a fire tonight i remembered a lyric i once writ:
home is where the heart is
read crocheted mantle piece
and that's all i could remember. but i s'pose that's all i needed to.

So Proud To Be Alive

bird faces, iced hair
pink and white
tights like sex
of the unknown kind

south loop train stops
for college girl mysteries
for high skirts
hiked up high

like the first minute of
a public transportation porno
stop after stop after stop
getting more and more

dense crowded intense
faces tired and hispanic
black and beaten down
young and hormonal

this...
is chicago
birthplace of house
and of slam

of improvisational
of sound design
hog butcher for the world
mecca of and for the midwest

"voices of broken hearts,
... voices singing, singing
... silver voices, singing
softer than the stars
softer than the mist"


blues brothers sunglasses
spring time's 'a comin'
and on a mission from god