Chicago -
By J.J. Tindall
A Lake Michigan Of The Mind
“Way down, below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be.” – “Atlantis,” Donovan
Unmoored,
Unmanned
But for your formless soul
Chugs the glass submarine
Swirling in circles to the east,
To the depths of sleep
Posted on May 15, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
Two Blues Lyrics
1.
More Than the Blues
I hold my heart in front of my face
Like it’s a skull I’m talking to.
I see my sadness take up space
Like it’s something brand new.
If this is what is right,
Why’s it feel so wrong?!
My heart’s a house of fever
Showing movies all night long.
Posted on May 7, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
The Black Cat
Every morning when I venture
Onto the grid as winter finally wanes,
My mind is a recalcitrant predator: hyper-aware,
Vigilant, cunning, poised. By necessity
A black cat with jade-green eyes.
In the center of each, black pupils
Which reflect any color image the cat
Contemplates, first displaying the primary colors
Before they coalesce into secondaries:
Red and yellow into orange, red and blue
Into violet. You have to be vigilant.
You can only see these colors reflected
Posted on April 7, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
Like A Rembrandt In Candlelight
She moves
Like a Rembrandt
In candlelight:
There’s a glimmer,
A flicker, that is signature.
The others lack dimension,
Somehow, in comparison,
Like the difference
Between the Great Plains
And the Kettle Moraine.
Posted on March 4, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
Courtyard Still Life: Cardinal and Cricket
The chirp of a courtyard cricket
Came in through the bathroom window.
It was high noon in summer.
I was startled. I heard eternity.
Cricket song, I thought,
Was a strictly midnight phenomenon.
One expects siren shriek, train whoosh, tire screech,
Car alarms, garbage trucks, arguments, gunfire.
Apartment courtyard acoustics prevail:
Posted on February 18, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
Treadwell at the DuSable Museum
In the early ’90s
We got stoned
Out of our living gourds –
Me, G.F. Fox and Seamus
(Representing West Town,
Ravenswood & De Paul) –
And made a drive south to
The DuSable Museum
Of African American History.
Posted on February 4, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
The Umpteenth Ward
“Forget It, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Every January morning here
The light is all vertical,
Shooting low from a late rising sun,
A seething head poking out of its lair,
Nervous like a fugitive.
Posted on January 21, 2019
By J.J. Tindall
Springsteen on Broadway (My Cousin Nora)
Mom went to Red Bank Catholic High,
Long Branch, New Jersey.
In the 1940s.
Posted on December 18, 2018
By J.J. Tindall
Black Ice Blues
Now: black ice lurks
Like a mugger, so time
To be aware
As a burglar.
Now: The whole wide world
Is booby-trapped,
“Frozen objects plummeting toward
The top of your skull
May be larger than they appear.”
Posted on December 3, 2018
By J.J. Tindall
I Am Iron Man
For the Hideout, in memory of the Beachwood Inn
I will cry blood
If we lose our magic hideout!
So let us coalesce
Into an Iron Hero:
Flesh of corrugated metal
Thick as a thousand
Posted on November 15, 2018
