Saturday, July 28, 2012

Along
To an urging fog I give emptiness to its nothingness. My desperate hands go round. My shoulders turn. I feel no freedom, just alone in the waiting of time. Perhaps what surrenders first are dying eyes? This fragile, mortal self inside an eerie fog; that urging, cloudy voice says to lie down is to know peace. But I am too young to sleep in your eternal night. Let me go and see the morn. I shift and walk straight. Only my pleading heart is old. My mortal steps hurry along.

Happy
I don't need Chicago balconies like shiny, wavy smiles
I don't need Army Navy stores torn and tattered as ragged Ole' Glory:
The blood of soldiers
The stain of sad, segregated streets of black on white
Nor the L that loops round dying buildings, sidling closely
Then recoiling against the rumble of what?
The decay of old men whose broad shoulders bend against windy tongues
I don't need Chicago, with its smiling balconies
But you call me often as if I were a wounded soldier
You call me to victory!
I'll surrender in the end. I will return. Happy as a man can be.