Reverse Compatible

First off, I am in Chicago.

This time, I remembered
how easy it is to forget.

ShawnaBean started her blog about
our cycles through Kentucky, like I said,
and not one day too soon, just as my phase
turns into a. . . something--- what ? ? ?

Another Phase.


I REPEAT


After all the times I swore I was done
with this place, here I am again,
in this hall of mirrors, labyrinth of glass and steel,
mess of brick and mud, MDF and plastic tarps,
the retail hole that sucks up labor loss by hiking up
the premiums on futures, I mean equity in good faith,
and . . .

This time I kind of like it here---

Skunktown, animal who urinates, and when the etymologists
get confused... we'll just say that the French map-makers
skipped a few grades.

Hunting beavers, spelling, and map-making aren't co-dependent.
Survival without money: what else can you dream of?

+++

Human, human, you so compartmentalized and good-bye,
cast away, guilt-ridden, so instant death. . . my last year's cool,
you make yourself so shiny, presentable, and
beyond the grasp of anyone, so plasticized, so cosmetic---
the way you hide in Chicago, my Chicago, twenty years
ahead

Do you ever have any friends?
Or do you just buy them?

Show me the money.

+++ --- +++

I walk your streets...
I can see your battered, bartered goods, ---
I know that you have seen your better days...


This place Chicago, Empire Central,
Sewer in the Sky, I love to call you
looking up at my own distortions in the clouds. . .

An eighty story fun-house mirror,
tippy on top, you winding spire; you're standing on my toes
so far off balance, hovering there and almost floating.
Oh my, God. You make me feel like I am in church again.

I've been on top.
Some time has passed &
I think about it for a really long time.

Yes, I think that I am falling out,
not a Rapture, but I can escape the Earth
now and then for a few moments at a time,
but I will always be coming back.

Hello, people.

Do you have any friends?


x - > < - x - > < - x - > < - x - > < - x - > < - x - > < - x - > < - x

EIGHTY ACRES OF HELL
(CAUTION: LINK LABYRINTH AHEAD)


Earlier, I was reading this book called Devil in the White City---
even though it is about H H Holmes- - - as deranged as he was
but for other reasons about other things, not so much
unlike Richard Wright's Native Son, but even more psychotic.
When I go to a new place, I feel very affected by the ones
who are already there. It goes, the axiom, like this:

When in Chicago, live as Chicagoans do.
What--- exactly--- do Chicagoans do?
I've taken up the practice.

Let's Go Crazy!

I'll be your Haunted Chicago tour guide
and show you a moment or two of how thrilling
life could be, often was, or might have been.

FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY.
NOT VALID WITH ANY OTHER OFFER.

The Windy City, according to this book,
Devil in the White City, Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair---
got the name in a particularly remarkable way.
It's quite profound, really, the way the journalists
(who were very proud of their newspaper)
tried to portray Chicago to their undoubtedly superior
rivals in New York, and at the same time, boast of
Chicago's come-uppance since Chicago, after the other EXPOs of the future,
the first one in London---
(there's a replica of it in Dallas)----

Chicago was chosen to host THE SECOND WORLD'S FAIR---
the 400th Aninversary of Christopher Colombus's fateful trip---
The Colombian Exposition Revisited.

Burnham and Root took part.
Walt Disney grew up in it next to his father who helped build it.
Chris Ware imagined himself as a pre-pubescent Walt Disney
in Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth
a simultaneous Super-Man who nose dives
from on top a Root box in the sky downtown.



Needless to say, Superman didn't fly.