Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues

In the United terminal in Chicago at five on a Friday afternoon The sky is breaking with rain and wind and all the flights Are delayed forever. We will never get to where we are going And there’s no way back to where we’ve been. The sun and the moon have disappeared to an island far from 
anywhere. Everybody has a heartache — The immense gatekeeper of Gate Z–100 keeps his cool. This guardian of the sky teases me and makes me smile through the mess, Building up his airline by stacking it against the company I usually travel: Come on over to our side, we’ll treat you nice. I laugh as he hands me back my ticket, then he turns to charm The next customer, his feet tired in his minimum wage shoes. Everybody has a heartache — The man with his head bobbing to music no one else can hear has that satisfied Feel — a full belly of sweet and a wife who sings heartache to sleep. In his luggage (that will be lost and never found) is a musty dream of flying Solo to Africa, with a stop on the return to let go the stories too difficult to Carry home. He’ll take off his shoes to walk in a warm, tropical sea. He’ll sing to the ancestors: Take me home to mama. No one cooks like her. But all the mamas worked to the bone gone too young. Broken by The Man. Everybody has a heartache — Everyone’s mouthing fried, sweet, soft and fat, While we wait for word in the heart of the scrambled beast. The sparkle of soda wets the dream core. That woman over there the color of broth did what she was told. It’s worked out well as can be expected in a world Where she was no beauty queen and was never seen, Always in the back of someplace in the back — She holds the newest baby. He has croup. Shush, shush. Go to sleep, my little baby sheepie. He sits up front of her with his new crop of teeth. Everybody has a heartache — This man speaks to no one, but his body does. Half his liver is swollen with anger; the other half is trying To apologize — What a mess I’ve made of history, he thinks without thinking. Mother coming through the screen door, her clothes torn, Whimpering:It’s okay baby, please don’t cry. Don’t cry. Baby don’t cry.