waking up in Chicago


I drank atomic bottles of tequila in the tiny cubicle
Of a vast Amtrak train.
The eyes of weary travelers crawled
Upon me like velvet spiders.
 
And I arrived in Chicago
To swim in the blues and summon up coke
From south-side queens.
 
I settled in Union Station
Smoking until dawn, the wood benches
Near the tracks were feathers
That beckoned me to lay.
 
And with the sun I set
On the tracks with a soldier blind from Vietnam
And understood there the insanity of self-destruction.