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I knew you when we were both
something like younger, Chicago.
Big urban brawler pock-marked
but proud, muscular electric
Downtown spinning "You don't fuck
with me, I don't fuck with you"
through fine-ground S-curves and
Why avenues where Algren and
Sandburg spat off curbs and
Mayors Richard the First and
the Second reigned, past corner
dime stores and bungalows face
to sagging face remembering
the Maketown they had known--
The Stockyards, street cars,
Riverview Park and strip bars,
World Series bunting, Black Sox
and Blue Cubs, blood-soaked
Twenties, gin-soaked Thirties,
acceptable wars before TV flicker,
Blackhawk and Airboy all over
the newsstands, Betty Grable and
Bettie Page on gas station walls,
sandlot players swinging cracked
bats wrapped back together with
electrical tape in neighborhoods
where everybody on the block
knew everybody on the block and
Suburbia was no more than a myth.


All gone. Like all the movie
houses speckling the city's
decaying downtown doughnut hole.
The United Artists. The Woods.
McVickers. Michael Todd. State-Lake,
Roosevelt, Loop, Monroe--all gone
but for the one named after you,
Winded City, and even that solid
old marquee was just barely spared
the lick of the wrecker's ball
and doesn't show flicks anymore.
The dead mice in the lobbies
have been swept away along with
the popcorn, Milk Duds stuck
to the bottoms of creaking seats
pushed all the way back to catch
black action bombs and kung-fu
comedies, the marble staircases
scrubbed for tidy Disney crowds
and the walls somewhat thicker
than the paint covering them.


Gone. The Oak. Family theater
in Mom's childhood. Porno house
in mine. Drive-thru bank now across
the street from Margie's Candies
where the Fab Four ate sundaes
before plying old Comiskey Park,
now a parking lot with a marble
plate staining the spot where
Nellie, Little Louie and Big Klu
rounded the bases on steaming
afternoons, picked it and gunned
on Autumn nights, played their
souls raw in the last baseball
championship chance you've had,
former Hog Butcher, long before
the modern know-betters tore
down the Baseball Palace of
the World and propped its shiny
stiff successor up across the way
on 35th Street. Not that long
before Pat and Bud brought up
their baby in the tenements
hugging part of Superior Street
where a golden-domed Ukrainian
Orthodox church now stands.


Not that all you are, ever were,
ever will be is mortar and
memories, old dear. It's just
harder to find a pulse, a thrust,
a trust in a place slapped onto
deep reaches of swampland,
drilled into the curve of a
a finger-shaped lake. City on
the Fake. A space massacred
by the native landlords, burned
down, snowed in, flooded out,
full of doubt that there is any
honor for the past, any prayer
for the future, anything in
the present to glare at through
rosy haze and even mistake for
hope, when what little we can
make out are silhouetted empty
evening porches, morning sidewalks,
mourning parents not warmed by
memories of the Good Ol' Days
when Bugsy Moran and Scarface Al
never accidentally whacked kids,
dads, husbands or friends--they
delivered lead presents in the name
of St. Valentine and sculpted fine
widows and orphans from perfectly
formed families and blunted streets.


The patterns repeat. Old is new
is old again, but still the beat,
the jarring heat of your sometimes
staining breaths, my love, goes
on across miles, changing styles
of words and music and quality
of light and life in and out
of subway stations freshly
tattooed and redecorated with
gradiated spray-paint murals,
of parkland just muscled enough
with softball diamonds and
tubular benches to beat back
the seaweed and prairie grass
they replaced way before
they became Playlands for
the dealers and deadmakers,
of neighborhoods patchworking
the whole damn quilt together
till down go the lights, the lives,
the eyes that can't stop tapping
through tears and breeze and
straining stained forearms and backs
till up go the cracking chants
of Chinatown and Little Italy,
Ravenswood and Englewood,
Back of the Yards and Bucktown,
Canaryville and Streeterville,
Logan Square and Lincoln Square,
Rogers Park, Humbolt Park,
Hyde Park, Albany and Wicker Park,
Grant Park on so sweet June afternoons...


Oh no. You are none of these.
You are all of these. Your head
lowered not in shame or pain but
weariness cuts on through southbound
rain, night-spark train cradled
on rust-flaked creasing palms ever
opening. Fisting. Fighting on as
always. Hoping. Always knowing for
absolute certain that you're phantasm
and fantasy and a city that turns
to grin and wince and shrug and
wink just enough every once in
a God-great while to let me
be a believer. A Lover. Alive.