| ::03:13:08::
::: Damen Ave. :::
Riding the bus was feeling the city.
While riding the 50 from Milwaukee to Montrose Ave.
you could see all the different seasons,
from the dismal poor near the factory south,
to the well-groomed family homes in Ravenswood north.
As the bus rolled north along tired Damen Ave.,
we passed brown tortilla street vendor Mexican neighborhoods,
that seemed to me, to be one large family of love and complete understanding
of kindness and brotherhood.
Clothes-lined backyards, and electric lined streets,
ornamented by old tennis shoe bells hanging by their laces,
that seemed to have been left overhead for all of eternity,
on lines connecting each house with vibrating beautiful
Mexican voices-which was pure poetry
that sang up from the dirty streets and opaquely painted homes.
The churches were just beginning to fill,
as we passed by on old number 50,
old Mexican women in dresses,
using canes to climb the concrete steps,
some with babies in blankets, along with very young children,
and whole families lingering around the steps outside the large church doors.
I wanted to tell them that they shouldn’t worry
they are already in heaven.
Every tearful midnight,
every heart filled with bluebirds flapping around in the endless kindness love,
every blissful kiss of morning,
every sad soul in the darkened alleyways of life
crying, broken, and drinking ethanol to numb.
Every poet killing his last thought to move onto another,
like jumping from stone to stone,
to every silhouette in the window waiting with only form to not be judged,
to not have to cower in thoughts of insecurities and resentments,
to the two men and their ghost smiling kindly in the clouds, or cosmos,
or inside the heart,
as they hold those bluebirds on strings like kites,
til the last puff of the last breathe breathing, heaven is everywhere.
But in God we trust,
or trust not,
and in life we live
or live not,
but have no worries,
for death is certain.
But for now, the bus rolls on,
past the poor hard souls,
living the lives of anyone Damen Ave.,
which could be any avenue,
anywhere.
Written by: ~ Jacob John |
