Somewhere in the 21st Century.

I was there when we won.
I saw Chicago glowing through its lonely terror,
illuminated and hopeful though aching and cold,
clear-eyed through the acrid smoke of the defeats of the past,
free enough at last to shatter the four walls of chances hamstrung by history.

I was there when we won
and, love drunk, saw my city:
(beautiful in its fire flowers),
terrible and terrorizing to the nightmares of oil and money;
pulsing veins full of America (which is pure light)
flooding the subways, bursting above ground, fire though the sky on L tracks.
alive and holy and changed and charged,
tested tortured tempered
unafraid;
human with hearts full of rose thorns and language and razor wire tongues on lilac pallets at doorways out of alleys at polls irrigating deserts
flash flooding laugh lines with the majesty of youth and poems lived instead of read.
Perfect.

I saw my city recalling with a wretch the near decade of law laid low;
of money-clutching claws stained crimson
With power, collected at any cost.
Remembered how the fix of fear dilated our pupils
and how some of us never sobered up enough to stop it.
Remembered thinking that freedom is like language; you aren't human if you lose it,
and wondered what monster it made us to let it go
without even one Molotov cocktail for a chaser, but came around in love to see my city beginning the revolution here at home:
rejecting at last the skinny-jeaned trust-funded cocained over-sexed decadent apathy of Wicker Park's carefully crafted irony.

I was there when we won.
I saw Grant Park's million-headed hydra scream at the signal when it came
and understood at once the meaning:
The Death
The Wheel brought
The World laid low by
The Emperor multiplied by
Strength.

I was there when we won.
I saw my city sing,
called my father and cried a bit and
waited for the wave to come.

J'accuse!

J'accuse!
Moloch that lurks behind the hills on frozen nights!
Dream eater!
Coward who hides behind the facts!
Diseased bringer of water and sugar and bitter pills and hope!
Godless revolutionary angel -flaming sword in hand- wretched Michael!
Firefly!
Flamethrower of rules!
Specter scent in my sheets!
Friend foe enemy archenemy NEMESIS!
J'accuse! J'accuse! J'accuse!
Wall of cinder and spring light!
Pathway of flowers!
Gateway of scales!
Gog of desire! Magog of despair!
Chemical feather pheromones and Marathon insomniac salt water lung equations! Atlantis mathematics!
Shoulders who shook for reasons!
Deep south afternoon nakedness!
Sweet tea legs!
Slow drawl lines!
Dragon hiding in the silent treatment!
Temple! Psalm with living legs! Heresy of absence! Undeserved forgiveness out of love!
Lion!
J'accuse!
Sphere!
J'accuse!
Hammer! Rain! Snapped oaks! Stormshine!
Barren rain-slicked streets in August!
Lover of almond anythings!
Understander of cats!
Alarm clock nightmare! Dream of "someday!"
Jet-stream! Gulf steam! Changer of world!
Brown bear!
Bad road!
Bad...BAD road!
Maker of my hands into mirrors!
Resolver!
Reason to walk toward the light at dusk through the dying western desert to your arms!
Elipsis!