Poetry
Felix Thursday
Postcard to Chicago
To hell with poverty! Let's get drunk on cheap wine!
Gang of Four
You have to meet the people here
Who drink more whiskey when they
should not drink more whiskey
Who implement great schemes
of nude lunacy and initiate
Truth or Dare's, always choosing
Dare
Who plug their ears with loud music
and mad shouts, to block out the
monotone voice of the mono-god
of guilt and senseless propriety
they were raised with
Who gamble their flesh for genii-wishes
And sleep three in a bed sparkling
Without shame
Who are self-induced and uniquely crazy
To escape the peas-or-carrots crazy
offered as the only other alternative
Who see over the walls of laws
And protest the false imprisonment
of birth and materialism
For whom America is always somewhere else
Who won't be fed the war diet
Who live in low-rent apartments whose
windows stare at the street in sad contemplation
of their own nostalgia
Who inspired me to try to pull
an iron christ from its cross
Nearly severing my fingers
One who ate mushrooms and,
contemplating Minimalism,
pissed on cushioned furniture
Another who stopped a truck in the middle
of the street with his attempted suicide
Then bit his rescuer's lip
Another who dresses like a slave of Sardonapolous
while her eyes are juxtaposed skyward
like Bottecelli's Virgin Mary
Another whose torpid clothing masks
her curious body
Who will all share their bodies or their bottles
Or you body or your bottle
You have to meet the people here
You who are becoming more aware
and increasingly unafraid and thus
can never reclaim your comfortable sanity
You who have fled the Gilded State, too
But for the legitimate slums of Al Capone Town,
Not the extremeless landscape of Kentucky
You who have called having a crisis over
what hat or dress to wear as a disguise
to a party or on the CTA
And left long intoxicated messages
about sex, art and insatiable loneliness
You who tell me about masturbating in the bathtub
while dreaming of Spain when it snows
You who never understood my sadness
until you saw Wrigley Field
Still searching for the inverse America,
Write back
