Chicago -
By J.J. Tindall
Zoo of Shadows
This is a memorial garden,
an Eden of dreams,
free to the public,
a regeneration of a 19th century
graveyard.
Little black holes linger
amidst the sculpted landscapes,
shade for scorpions.
They lengthen as the sun wanes.
Posted on June 24, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
My Mind is Like a Rhododendron
Let me be candid:
I like beer and I
love the ladies!
That’s the thing of it.
My mind is like a rhododendron:
everywhere it leaps, it eats.
This is the thing of it,
Posted on May 31, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Re*ac*tor
My skull became a nuclear reactor,
where my mind
burned white.
Overwhelmed by a tsunami
of grievous
but universally human
Posted on May 20, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Sad Eyed Lady of the Northwoods
Something in the way
she grieved
attached to me like
sin on skin.
Beyond her Mercury mouth
and Venus eyes
was a sadness, a black mass
of blues and lies
Posted on April 16, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Djinns of Catalina
March has been usurped by May
in this season of strange days.
The heat mirages, djinnis of oil,
already shimmer up Harlem Avenue
and the squalls along the eastern horizon
conjure a Catalina off the Third Coast:
holographs of Hearst and Chaplin
yachting with Rosetta and Loretta Martin,
Old Man Wrigley’s battery ditching practice
to swim with invisible sharks.
Outside the women come and go
talking of the marriage that is in woe.
Posted on March 18, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Strawberry Town Forever
The objective remains
a vision in the mist, the other side of awesome,
like the Cheshire smile of a lemon leopard,
like the Sphinx, Cheops of Giza,
at dusk. There beneath the black
suburban skies, the objective remains.
Let me take you down cuz
I’m going to Strawberry Town.
Posted on February 17, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Big Fat 49 to Strawberry Town
For Nello Ferrara (1919-2012), Chicago Candy Giant
I spilled out into the black breeze
like a leopard in jeopardy.
Electric light ahead on Hirsch
beckoned a bejangled, fat
49er, the southbound CTA Western 49.
I could just about see it shine.
49 to the Blue Line,
big blue lime.
Posted on February 10, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
A Swan in a Swamp
So: there’s an angel
in my guts,
a swan in my swamp.
White swamp, snow bog,
like rain after a blizzard.
The egrets and heron belong
but the swan
seems wrong, a slim wizard
in a fat fog,
a cherub
‘midst the bats and frogs.
Cottonmouth bastards,
croc motherfuckers
Posted on January 23, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Black and Blue
One black morning
the ordinary returned.
Savings and career
obliterated;
inundated, enervated by
cheap, trite platitudes
Posted on January 2, 2012
By J.J. Tindall
Holiday II: The Wizard of Is
Poems can be kind of
a pain in the ass.
You walk a line
between obscurity
and obviousness.
I like to make music
and sometimes meaning
gets obscured.
Kind of a pain
in the ass.
Posted on December 19, 2011
