National Poetry Month - 12 of 30

Ambition

I want to make Chicago the city of Romance

to blast all the working class ennui into today’s

brilliant sunshine. I want to sit in the heat

with a woman and drink from a brown bag

reading passages from Kundera and have folks

say  that crazy New Yorker crosse his legs

like he’s on the Champs Elysees! At first

they will say remove the yellow kerchief

from your head! Shelf your wild colors

and your ridiculous shoe fetish! We are a city

of flat vowels, and chisels and trowels

and it will be the last time I listen

to anyone tell me to play anything

like safe or good sense. I want Milwaukee Avenue

to flow like the Nile – Hyde Park to swagger

like the Left Bank –  if  Englewood doesn’t shimmer

with the same silvery edge as Bushwick,

then I will have failed - when that crazy Brooklyn

Trinidadian gets old I want them to say –

he told us we were beautiful – we told him

we were workers – then we looked at our hands

and touched the faces of those we loved –

and walked into other parts of town and sang

the songs we found there – and believed.

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com