Chicago – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Seeing

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander‘st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Here is what remains after I erase all but the text in red bold:

Seeing

Summer’s temperate.
Winds do shake and heaven shines
And gold and every fair declines.
Nature’s trimmed but summer shall not fade
Nor shall thou wander in his shade.
When eternal eyes can see,
This gives life to thee.

Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. Victoria C. Slotto hosts and her theme is to take a text and create another text from it by erasing some of the original text.

Photos: Something to see with or without eternal eyes: “Chicago River”, above, and “Reflections Everywhere”, below, by the author.

Lake Michigan

The east side of Chicago would be Lake Michigan, the most beautiful side of Chicago which I prefer experiencing from a dry distance since I can’t swim and I have no intention to learn. Hopefully this makes the city itself happy knowing that when I walk along the lakefront I prefer her beautiful arms.

WATER WAVINESS
TEASES ME WITH SUMMER’S HEAT
WINTER’S CHILLY TOUCH

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Bjorn hosts with the theme of “water”. Come join us writing haibun.

Photo: “Chicago from Navy Pier” by the author.

Announcement: Christopher Fielden has accepted my story, “Keeping His Cool”, as Story 62 in Chris’s Colossal Cliche Count Writing Challenge, a 150-word-max humorous flash fiction challenge with the goal of using as many cliches as one can cram into that restricted space and hopefully still writing a readable story.

While Driving Home

The first time I drove these fast, multi-lane interstate highways connecting Chicago and northern Indiana I was alone and I thought I was going to die or get my butt kicked since I wasn’t supposed to be on them. I was driving a cheap, used car I bought from a classmate without asking my father’s advice because I didn’t have a brain in my head. A week later, after the car and I survived I-94, that car suddenly lost oil and brought me, safely, to its final stop on a country road. Driving back to my childhood town these memories take advantage of the opportunity to hold my attention. My sister is still there with her family. There is also my former teacher. His children, who have children now, I remember as children whom I baby sat while their youngest sibling was being born. My parents are both there, side by side, but where they really are, and perhaps who they really are, I will find out in the not too distant future. One by one, they joined my youngest brother whose misfortune with automobiles was worse than mine. I can still see my father opening the door for me as we gathered that day. How he cried! I hear Omar Alfanno’s “Un Hombre de Verdad” playing from my phone over the car’s speakers. My heart tells my mind that enough is enough and they give me a chance to listen. I touch repeat.

APRIL’S EYES HAVE CLEARED
EARTH WAITS WARM AND PATIENTLY
BLOOMS SMILE EVERYWHERE