the first time I saw lightning strike I saw it at sea (or something like that)

Can't stop hearing the Cure's "Hot, Hot, Hot" in my head. Spent the earlier hours today somewhere near Kankakee & it was all green cornstalks and beanfields, or fields of whatever grows there. I'd forgotten how narrow those midwest county roads can be. Thinking about horrific photos my grandfather took in London after the Nazi bombs he never showed us & that I discovered a couple yrs. back after my grandmother died.

a pome?



2206


sun-reflected mirror on blue
municipal garbage truck refracts
is a strobe gives
fits thru
leaves high noon. Still slow from last night’s

sleeplessness I board a 66 for my one o’clock --
dusty, wood-planked construction
site foreground to the Batman-black
Hancock. A lazy Wed.
The movie ppl.

commandeered E. Delaware
Ave. The tourists in tucked
-in shirts & pleated shorts point
fingers, crane planetarium-stretched necks & block
pedestrian traffic

on The Mile
as always & it’s
hot not humid as I write
chord charts for tonight’s audition.
Down to my last $50 until July

-- 9 days away. I leave
the bus at Larrabee. New
condos cast cool shadows above
Sra. M. Cabrini’s remaining
projects & I think

I must be
some kind of communist, recalling
P.R. in my youth
its moneyed its
have-nots. The good guys

in the movies couldn’t touch
Carmencita Rodriguez, my cousins’
abuelita leafleted island
intersections in the ‘70s
taught me Spanish

& Catholic Voodoo
under far
more oppressive suns
who died this week
2 yrs. ago

from cancer
as always it may
be the tightness of my wallet
makes me think
this way. I can’t remember

anything but
this lusty hunger for
anything else. I could
have been wealthy, well
-heeled

& boring
& today E. told me
she thinks G.'s a whore
(her words) for not holding the elevator
& last night’s full

moon must linger
like a buzz
the tourists the
manifest destinies
of the movie ppl.

I want cold beer, a dog
a starlet of my own
& hungry & alone
is there no place
like home.