Urine and jazz saturate the stairwell
between Union and the Mississippi,
A cross-rhythm syncopation of fresh
ammonia against augmented 7th,
stalemate of crass and class in the heat of
a burning and half-diminished sun.
True steps beating in time-feel, sweatlaced and
consuming what remains of the lost day,
fly swiftly toward an exit—one-two
pattern of converses and stars in a
place where the sales pitch is darkened, replaced
jaded by the realest real of them all.
Beneath shadowed Agave Maria,
Summer’s heat creeps soft into the city,
And balancing like a stone torrent smooth,
Waiting against the current for magic
to interrupt the dark chambers of self,
I embrace what is with abandon:
Deconstruction, cynicism, pathos—
all rummaging through ilk of cicadas
in human form, moving nymphlike from ground
to sky then back again with hollow shells
in their wake, machine whirring overhead,
night song written, then sung, then vanished
