what you gotta do is play your own simple blues

This girl, Vivian, who had given me the ride to Chicago, left me with a little grass. So one night I went down by the sewage treatment plant by the Loop where the river is entirely industrialized. It's all concrete banks and effluvia by the Marina Towers. So I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simple blues. So that's what I did. I appropriated a lot of their vocal forms, and also their turns of phrase—either heard or misheard or twisted from blues songs. So "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is probably my mishearing of "Baby Please Don't Go."

~ Iggy Pop, interviewed in Legs McNeil's "Just Kill Me"

[State Street at the Chicago River]

a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark

Hazel's grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger. He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.

"Wise Blood," Flannery O'Connor

[Wabash Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

voices instead of colors

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
"Letters," Rainer Maria Rilke

[Wicker Park]

quietly obscene

Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene. It’s been doing that all week: making beauty, and throwing it away, and making more.

"A Color of the Sky," Tony Hoagland

[East of Damen Avenue, north of Lee Street]

in silence the heart

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,
Freckled... There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

"True Love," Robert Penn Warren

[East of Damen Avenue, north of North Avenue]

now is, all there is

This is now. Now is,
all there is. Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,
feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance
the way branches
of jasmine and cypress
dance in a spring wind.

The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.

~ Rumi

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

but a dream

[Winchester Street at Damen Avenue]

suspected

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

the universe will soon

God begins. The universe will soon.
The intensity of the baseball bat
Meets the ball. Is the fireball
When he speaks and then in the silence
The cobra head rises regally and turns to look at you.
The angel burns through the air.
The flower turns to look.

"Midnight," Frederick Seidel

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

disciplined

That is a young man's game. I don't have the stomach for that kind of disciplined asshole-ism any longer.

~ Seth remarks.

[California Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

sincere and lilting tone

Babette employed her storytelling voice, the same sincere and lilting tone she used when she read fairytales to Wilder or erotic passages to her husband in their brass bed high above the headlong traffic hum.

"White Noise," Don DeLillo

[Lower Michigan Avenue above Chicago River]

bolting

[Lower Michigan Avenue above Chicago River]

desperate enough just to do anything

I was trying to understand what art is and what artists do, and a lot of that, for me, seemed to involve watching and waiting to see what would happen. When I'm desperate enough just to do anything, even if it seems completely stupid, its suach a relief.

~ Bruce Nauman

[Damen Avenue above Evergreen Street]

as close to their reflections

Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible.

"Divisadero," Michael Ondaatje

[East of Winchester below Augusta Boulevard]

spring breeze

[Ukrainian Village]

conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

"The Poet & The City," W. H. Auden

[Underneath Blue Line, Damen Avenue below North Avenue]

the moment of a yawn

Lucien had said all he knew and remembered about Marie-Neige in these stories, the sound of her wheelbarrow, how she lit a fire, the moment of a yawn, the way she had talked about a thistle in a ditch. She was within him now.

"Divisadero," Michael Ondaatje

[Dearborn Street below Polk Street]

I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want.

"What Do Women Want?," Kim Addonizio

[Michigan Avenue above Huron Street; Damen Avenue above Thomas Street]

rounded with a sleep

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

"The Tempest," Shakespeare

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

night breeze

[Near Damen Avenue and Augusta Boulevard]

keep this coupon

[Damen Avenue at Thomas Street]

follow you home

You get me everytime

Why'd you have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

Follow you home
You've got your headphones on
And you're dancing

"Goodnight And Go," Imogen Heap

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

a perfect subject

Little Susie tosses a clock out the window. A robot inquires, "Why did you do that?" She replies, "I wanted to see time fly!" The robot says, "Ah... A perfect subject for elimination," and shoots her with a laser beam.

~ Via свеча горела на столе.

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

love an empty airport

The plane has touched down in the rain
In a country I don't know.
Talk about plain and strange.
I don't speak their singsong ugly language. Having arrived,

I am ready to leave already.
I love it out on the runway.
It's late at night. I love an empty airport.
They stamp my passport.

"I Own Nothing," Frederick Seidel

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

rarely-beloved a single star is uttered

in the rain-
darkness, the sunset
being sheathed i sit and
think of you

the holy
city which is your face
your little cheeks the streets
of smiles

your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss

and
there is the sweet shy pirouette
your hair
and then

your dancesong
soul. rarely-beloved
a single star is
uttered,and i

think
of you

"in the rain," e. e. cummings


[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

the shadow that everything casts

Three years ago, in the afternoons,
I used to sit back here and try
To answer the simple arithmetic of my life,
But never could figure it—
This object and that object
Never contained the landscape
nor all of its implications,
This tree and that shrub
Never completely satisfied the sum or quotient
I took from or carried to,
nor do they do so now,
Though I'm back here again, looking to calculate,
Looking to see what adds up.

Everything comes from something,
only something comes from nothing,
Lao Tzu says, more or less.
Eminently sensible, I say...
But one and one make nothing, he adds,
endless and everywhere,
The shadow that everything casts.

"Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn," Charles Wright

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

it is this that the darkness is for!

I argued all night, like so many have before, saying: Whatever you give me, I need so much more. Then she pointed at me where I kneeled on the floor. She said: Don't try to use me, or slyly refuse me, just win me or lose me—it is this that the darkness is for!

"Lady Midnight," Leonard Cohen

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

matter don't mind

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
~ Dr. Seuss

[West of Milwaukee Avenue above Wood Street]

division

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

win winn

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

second-hand satisfaction, half-souled

We go to our graves with secondary affections,
Second-hand satisfaction, half-souled,
star charts demagnetized.
We go in our best suits. The birds are flying. Clouds pass.
Sure we’re cold and untouchable,
but we harbor no ill will.
No tooth tuned to resentment’s fork,
we’re out of here, and sweet meat.
Calligraphers of the disembodied, God’s word-wards,
What letters will we illuminate?

"Black Zodiac," Charles Wright

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

no such place as brooklyn

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

axes

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

tangle

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

vagrant

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

corner

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

obituary, i like that word

Andy Warhol: I wonder if people are going to remember us?
Edie Sedgwick: What, when we're dead?
Andy Warhol: Yeah.
Edie Sedgwick: Well I think people will talk about how you changed the world.
Andy Warhol: I wonder what they'll say about you... in your obituary. I like that word.
Edie Sedgwick: Nothing nice, I don't think.
Andy Warhol: No no, come on. They'd say, "Edith Minturn Sedgwick: beautiful artist and actress...
Edie Sedgwick: ...and all around loon.
Andy Warhol: ...Remembered for setting the world on fire...
Edie Sedgwick: ...and escaping the clutches of her terrifying family...
Andy Warhol: ...Made friends with everybody, and anybody...
Edie Sedgwick: ...creating chaos and uproar wherever she went. Divorced as many times as she married, she leaves only good wishes behind... That's nice, isn't it?

[West of Damen Avenue, below Thomas Street]

no one owns life

No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

~ William S. Burroughs

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

a sense of what is not

He remembers what the brown owl sounded like while he was sleeping.
The man wakes in the frigid morning thinking about women.
Not with desire so much as with a sense of what is not.

Many days in the woods he wonders what it is that he has for so long hunted down. We go hand in hand, he thinks, into the dark pleasure,
but we are rewarded alone, just as we are married into aloneness.

"Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness," Jack Gilbert

[Damen Avenue below Cortez Street]

shame followed

Somewhere along the line in this country, the notion of discretion became an anachronism. After discretion fell, shame followed, all but vanishing from the cultural landscape, along with privacy, humility, and modesty. I blame blogs.

~ Allison Glock

[Below Augusta Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

the greatest of these

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

~ I Corinthians 13:13

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

only a voice

Although people sometimes act like they think so, a singer is not like a saxophone. If you don't sound right, you can't go out and get some new reeds, split them just right. A singer is only a voice, and a voice is completely dependent on the body God gave you. When you walk out there and open your mouth, you never know what's going to happen.

"Lady Sings the Blues," Billie Holiday

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

without grace

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Deepest Humboldt Park]

One-three-hundredth of the Icelandic population

The Icelandic band Benni Hemm Hemm performs at Empty Bottle.

[Cortez Avenue at Western Avenue]

the only sound that's left

Cinderella, she seems so easy
'It takes one to know one,' she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
'You Belong to Me I Believe'
And someone says, 'You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave'
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.

~ Bob Dylan

[North Avenue east of Milwaukee Avenue]

but now we cannot

You see we all thought the ride would be lovely
and worth the trip, which it was, but now we cannot go anywhere
having already been everywhere. No, do you
understand how realistic it all is?

"Girls on the Run," John Ashbery


[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

laughed inside her laughter

She has brought them to her senses,
They have laughed inside her laughter,
Now she rallies her defenses,
For she fears someone will ask her
For eternity—
And she’s so busy being free...

"Cactus Tree," Joni Mitchell

[Damen Avenue and Chicago Avenue]

monotony

Let dandelions be. They break up
the monotony of the grass.

"Residents," Richard Leck

[Wicker Park]

some good in you

You’re worse than a spoiled kid, you always want the last word.
You’re the most egotistical, overbearing man I’ve ever known.
But there’s some good in you.
At the right moment you can become someone else.
In an instant you become wonderful, wonderful, wonderful and I forget all my worries.

"Grande, Grande, Grande," Alberto Testa, Tony Renis, as rendered by Jonathan Van Meter.

[Delaware Place west of Michigan Avenue]