Good Morning, Chicago

Good Morning, Chicago

Three AM,
The old moon with fuzzy edges,
alone with the moon,
in the room without toys.
Laughter is hard to find
these days.

The stumbling old man
pee’d in the elevator
and didn’t notice, didn’t see
the wetness in his pants.
I moved closer to block him
from the stares, the yuppie smirks.
Hell, they’ll be old, incontinent some day.

Three AM with no internet.
I wander around my room,
so weary with the world.
The streets of Streeterville belching
Up the homeless, since
The mental health clinics closed.

A retired school teacher sits at Starbucks,
her belongings in a few garbage bags.
She had a big hospital bill, evicted, and sits now
in Starbucks, sleeps in the hospital ER.
I almost offer to bring her home with me,
but can’t, one person, bring them all home.

I am an army of one.
I watch my city implode: a retired teacher,
on the streets living out of white tie pull garbage bags,
the old, the children washing down their pain daily with putrid water,
waiting for the night to sleep in an emergency room, an alley,
and begin it all again the next morning. Good morning, Chicago.