Brilliant colors
Bold patterns
Rotate the tube.
Infinite symmetry
The glass slips.
The design is new.

Snowflakes beget snowflakes;
Blues give way to new hues.
An image breathtakingly plain
Gone in an instant
Replaced by another
But another all the same.

City Streets of Chicago
Peering from a bench on the Southside
To a rundown building door
Propped open to reveal
Brilliant colors, bold patterns – 
Blues that weren’t there before.

The voice reverberates
The melancholy message.
The singer suffers for his tune – 
Hard times, poverty, pain.
Colored glass slipping, revealing
These times are nothing new.

Rotate the tube;
A hotdog stand nearby
The tourist served standard fare.
Snowflakes begetting
Odors of mustard and pickles
Slipping for others to share.

Blues now gold and platinum
Hotdog stands and people
Black and brown and white 
Suffer symmetry through angled mirrors
Lacking straightforward
An understanding of the other’s plight.

Twist the tube;
Turn it back to where it was. 
Futilely attempt to recapture.
The door is shut;
The blues muffled;
A new checker box pattern enraptures.