met a cabbie
		------------------------------------------------------------

			"pretty pretty pretty"
				-- The Raincoats

		tremor tremor little lights -- i'm looking out west

		spread in grids pinpricks globules in carpets
		green blue and pink red in broadway's 1200 west neon
		the neighborhood houses appear mascara'ed by autumn trees
		unlike the mercury cool of the alley lights
		or the feeble lights atop head/tail-lighted taxis

		oh freddie he dead

		saw him -- saw them for the first time
		my first show -- at the roosevelt auditorium
		on congress in seventy six.  i still see a silhouette.

		our city is so alive so pretty
		and will continue
		hovers in a celestial pudding at night at nearly morning
		many snores short of yawning
		crisp out there -- a daze of clarity
		a quiet moment on the elevated line

		which is to say -- guess you are snoring out there

		would have snored here myself
		had i not stayed up two nights ago
		waiting for the missing
		those who arrived in the western lands

		we too will go to the western lands
		bismillah --

		you met a cabby

		under a varnish of scorn a forlorn sweetness
		sweetness gone to western lands too
		for every globule -- some memory
		in every street -- a trajectory
		oh freddie he western lands already
		but we are still/here

		our city is pretty pretty pretty
		and will continue

			Marek Lugowski
			2 November 1999
			Chicago, Illinois