#beanchicago

(Cloud gate/ The Bean-Chicago, U.S.A)

You walk under a cloud

- Alice Yousef

We don't always understand what moves above our heads who gives clouds direction or lining made strictly of silver not gold- Is it cheaper metal?

you can walk under a cloud without thinking of it why now that you are surrounded in shining images of your own steps is it that you think of the skies?

the dead hold no envy, you know it is only reserved for the living

Who told you that you can only be on the other end of a navel only once, young and unable to talk who said you had to be an unborn child?

it is a fact now, that you can walk and be born once out of a vigor without thought or need for notes to remember how to truly stand up

yet why, you wonder, is it this atonement? make a mistake and never correct it because you are sure it will correct itself, sealed and traded like Jack's beans

let me tell you a story: once upon a time, you were born to build let me tell you something else: this story doesn't end happy or sad, you keep changing the adjectives because no one, you say, can predict the end

who wants to predict anyway?

They had told you the world had no navel but you couldn't believe how a round belly cannot have one, didn't this blue ball come from another mother?

don't we have a core center to where we stand a place kissed in times of nightmares dunked in alcohol to recover from a disaster

it is a shot to this body, tequila poured like fire in navels

imagine this trail of obsession to origin: where we walked barefoot in the grass, the navel of this universe

is where the dew brushes the backs of our ankles on a crisp windy day

this is the city of the wind, marked by a silver reflection, hanging from its navel a gate for the clouds to pass under a cloud

you & the cloud are made of one thing: so much water and a little bit of earth

Kapoor had a vision, when you distort an image you create another: maybe more powerful a feeble child breaking from a grandmother's grip  without breaking her arms

this is tenderness then, the way you can curve with others like a double sided bean yet remain awfully straight when you stand up

that is escape, when you break another will for your own, not selfish or foolish for thinking about becoming, finding your own navel