 |
Chicago
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and
the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling City of the Big Shoulders:
--Carl Sandburg
Chicago,
Hog Butcher Up And Left—
thought he’d leave the South Shore
to the metal-brewing poisonmakers—
KILL THAT WATER! KILL IT DEAD!
‘Course, any-yass-wipe fool along duh
jungle stream
knows yoo doo not crap where you drink—
maybe dat’s why duh Hog Butcher
up’n’left:
his shit was just, too, Organic.
Still…
|
They took that steel-shine, stacked it up and made it fly,
made you feel real proud just to get a kink in your neck
looking way up high past the Dow Jones,
right up to where the sky
she lay like drama,
over the Cloud Gate down below—
on the ground where Soap-bubble Reality
fixes everything. Like that culture gap thing with
New Yawk, New Yawk
Child,
There is never a night with nothin-to-do, in the Windy
Cité.
There is always somethin-goin-down, in town.
There is somethin-for and to oh-ffend…
Everybody.
‘Sides, there’s lotsa folks’d rather have
Half a Polish down by the Lake (that’s a sausage)
than One Whole Russian at Coney Island (that’s not)
DOBRZE, baby, DOBRZE.
I don’t have no problem with that Hog Butcher leaving
though—
Stunk to high heaven:
folks who had people to visit
up in Milwaukee—on the weekend?—
had no idea what we were talking about.
But on your way back home from Indianapolis,
Terre Haute, Peoria and Points South, DAMN!
You’d be sleeping in the back seat dreaming Lake Shore Drive,
then your eyes would boomerang open go
Hey—
I must be home— (sniff) Love that organic waste!
And there was that Colombian turista once,
looked heavenly going Chicágo-Chicágo, Al Capón, righ’?
But No, said
the undergraduate ingénue,
That’s all cleaned up now, all over!
Yeah, all over City Hall.
But somebody had the cojones—LOS COJONAZOS—
To hold back a bunch of City Hall Salaries
till they finished doing their City Hall Jobs
now that’s ‘My Kind
of Town’.
And I can still see those pictures of mama—
Mama who was Polish and Italian
and African and Irish
and Jewish and Hungarian
and Czech, Off, That, List,
I can still see those pictures—
she be-lookin like the Andrews Sisters
wearing them shoulder pads that
held up a World War
II tailored suit,
dancing around with a flower in her hair,
over at the Green Mill Lounge,
just down the street from the Aragon Ballroom,
which went and morphed into El Aragón,
somewhere between Perez Prado and Gay Pride.
But hey, if you’re Italian
you can get your very own
de-signer home,
with no, windows, exposed, to
the street,
if
you want, if U R I-talian.
And if you’re Jewish,
you can get your kid’s barmitzvah suit
from the Ghost of a Tailor
down on Maxwell Street,
prob’ly get a double order of Maxwell
Grilled Onions
stuffed in the breast pocket,
if
you want, if you are Jewish.
And if you Black, if you are African American,
you can still get that Rib Special,
down on the SOUTH-side,
down in the basement?—
and that African Queen be-layin on
some Extra, Hot, Sauce,
whether or not you are African, American.
And for one whole day out of every year
she can and just might be Irish.
Because Something Happened Here,
right here, where the Cold Wind blows
(Naw,
it ain’t cold, it’s duh frickin Moon, it’s planet Pluto
unfit for human habitation,
when the Cold Wind blows…)
But Something Happened Here.
And it keeps right on happening—
And it looks kinda fine, tastes kinda sweet,
sounds kinda hot,
and it don’t smell too bad neither now't that
Hog Butcher up ‘n’ left.
But they tell me if you hang-around-down-around
Forty-Second and Halsted, you can still
smell The Yards—
Prob’ly some old sausage maker working down in the basement—
Or maybe, the Indelible Shadows of Blood
and Evil,
lingering long past their prime—
Or maybe, just the Spirit of Christmas
Past,
helping Scrooge remember where it all
comes from,
dragging a few Smoky Links
behind.
© Copyright 2015 by Cary
Please share your travel experiences and impressions by clicking on the word ‘comments’ below. Alternatively, send your comments to the author directly at dinosasha@juno.com.
Visit Travelwalk: Poems and Images,
published by Hartley-Wildman, April 2014
