On the way to work, I often pass the homestead of the homeless man under Wacker Drive.
It's an oddly littered place of old blankets and sideways prescription bottles
garbage and dead bird feathers
and when I pass him he is always sitting, staring straight ahead.
Always sitting, always staring, staring straight ahead.
Today was different for when I came to the homestead of the man
under Wacker Drive
there was a different man
sitting and staring.
He had different skin, different features, and he was a different man.
Yet he was sitting, staring straight ahead.
Before I could mull too long on this, I was taken
by a small, tough man coming toward me on the sidewalk
with tattoos up and down his stocky, hairy arms
a heavy looking t-shirt as white as the cigarette
in his teeth
he was smoking and it was coming out of his face
like a smokestack
like his whole head, rather than just his mouth, was smoking
reminding me of a cartoon
on a Saturday
he was focused and nervous
possibly as crazy as the man I just saw sitting and staring
But then my attention was taken like luggage on a plane
toward a woman standing on the sidewalk
with a brown cigarillo between her lips
the cigarillo the same color as her skin
and her dark hair fell
as she held up a box of matches
and entire box of matches
to make a light
and last, but oh not least
a woman in a brown leather jacket and tight pants
throwing up her arms like it was a national tragedy
that a cab passed her by
and up, up high
there's a crane
dropping a pile of rope
down into a makeshift wooden basket
where a man in a hardhat seems disinterested
and a man in another color hardhat, a white hard hat
comes out, presumably to undo the rope
from the crane
