When we fell in love
Chicago compressed
with heat on my lips
dry as some red worms
charred hips bricks they oscillate
against this cracked brown curb
you heated me up ts-ah kept me orange
with just a little black
breathing sulfur under my tongue
if only I didn’t have asthma on nights like these
we were under Van Buren
trying to push 2am into the coals
“blow on it baby” and I know
it sounded dirtier coming from me
three is a crowd tonight
beside the elevator all hot blooded
men have forgotten a lighter a dollar
have forgotten their script on the 29 bus
forget rats hares glazed brown and white
drip salt over their little sweater teeth below the street
I know there are a lot of good things to say
about the way shins burn under jeans
but please can we talk
about anything else
the daily reminder of free ice skating
in the park never got out in time
the night we turned the river around
barehanded and bellies out
took a big gulp as we pumped
all our shit into the Mississippi
the begetter
Old Lady Leary
the way we all get singed
when Obama and Oprah decide to come home
I want to take it like it’s mine to ignite
but damn if I just got here
and yet there he is Rahm Emanuel
turned like an angry escalator
he’s indulging all the locals
burning me with a hand underground
still I never really got what time to stop getting off
at Harrison on red
you and me and the sulfury walls of Van Buren
still curling around with good fingers
knuckle-less and no one in the room
knows where they’re coming from
In March is the breathless emerald flood
of everybody who showed up for Flogging Molly
I am not drunk enough
I crumple my legs with the whip-lashed outside
when the gray sky cracks hard and hot
the concrete is crowded by rusty headless legs
they stampede
and I sit inside them
wait for your crooked arms
to strike the Sears tower
I always liked to watch
you sink your teeth into it
you start the garden I am in
irons as the buildings drip with wet clay
finally safe
from the old cow in the barn
drowning is something
bad that can also happen
to us it seems like Van Buren
will just barely be engulfed
If I only stayed there you’d be in me now
like coals slipping into soot
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