You find out who you are in bus depots.
In the downtown Chicago Station,
late at night, there are times
when a hard floor is preferable
to yet another chair and you find
yourself eavesdropping on the tidbits
of several dozen conversations
that are all pretty much about the same thing.
Dreams take on a delusional quality
at 3 in the morning crammed in
next to a Taiwanese foreign exchange student
who asks everyone he sees what it must be like
to see a tornado. Pure thought percolated
into direct action-- words transubstantiate
into solid forms hanging listless on the heat
that bounces back up from the cement floor
and lingers like an the odor of moldy cheese.
You know the better class of mad men
because they are more eloquent
when describing their particular delusions;
and somehow when they tire of you
and find some other soul to preach at
their absence is palpable.