Another poem...

Channeling Carl Sandburg

City of big shoulders
You seduced me
With your strong, steel towers
And crystal lakefront
Shimmering rectangle windows reflecting
The sunset — orange, pink, blue
Sinking across the prairie sea
So far from here, and silent
I look at your impenetrable façade
From my car on Lake Shore Drive
Oh, what twists and turns of my
Life came to this moment, in
This place.
Your Meis van der Rohe buildings
Stare at me. Cold. Absent.
You have taken so much.

I wonder
What it all means.
Why I decided this and not that
How I came here and not there
You are a part of me now
Your creaking, putrid El trains and
Homeless beggars
Your elbowing executives
Your insecure Lincoln Park girls in high heels
Your North Shore entitlement and
Desperate drug dealers on my corner
Your noise and chaos
And heat and sorrow
And struggles and concrete
Energy and beauty
Have sunk deep into my bones
I think often of leaving you

But iron sharpens iron
You have made me what I am
Thank you. I hate you
I’m addicted to you. I want to leave you
You are a part of me
Your tentacles are woven into every part of me
I cannot get free of you
My dysfunctional lover
You are my home.

desire

It has been a long time
Since I saw myself
Clearly in the reflection of
The fountain, my face found
Among the copper pennies
Wishes tossed.
Hope.
Desire.
How many came true? And how many
Strewn, like dead leaves in Fall
At the bottom
My face, distorted. Tired.
I carry with me
A heart full of pennies.