Why I Am Not A Painter

every places' nice places
is a bad photograph
of the place you wish
you called home

Chicago is the prettiest
word, it tastes like chocolate
when you say it: Chicago

i have started to have an appreciation
for bridges. it built itself
beneath me, sometime slowly, these
past five years

most of the time you forget
Chicago has a river

never say this is the most beautiful
place. say In St. Paul, in the Twin Cities,
but not in the Midwest.

Allen Ginsberg, eight-thousand dollars two
thousand six, i wish New York
weren't so edgy

find yourself loving
a place that reminds you
of a place

Emily telling everyone downtown
which part of Chicago
is like Paris

find yourself beside a river
shallow, in the woods, a white
bucket of dusty porn jammed
into the bank beside an abandoned
picnic bench

fall into a lame mud
go nowhere against the kitten currents
get back into the canoe

walk safely beside the sixty
foot drop until you feel
safe. maybe an hour write
fifteen minutes of poetry

don't admit to anything

hide at the low spots
of the river from more
than one boy who loves you

love it if it's made
of water. hate constructed
falls, green night lighting

regardless of where you
live, you live beside a water
tower and drive-thru
McDonald's quit avoiding
the suburbs the idea
is inside you like hiccups

at the park, you stumble
into granite and lose a pebble
in your knee. it is three weeks
before you notice it is missing

the city is no more adult
than you are it wears big
clothes and makeup

the most expensive wedding
i have been to Michigan Ave

lobster.

bridesmaids line up at Lake Shore Drive
and also outside a glorified living
complex in their once-worn dresses.
the building is across the street
from the police department.

have you been a child
with a tape recorder
and book, having no idea
where it is you are going?

each neighborhood my mother
takes me to has large dead
animals in the windows