to the health of COD: the future of American journalism

rod stewart croons twice at the drop of a dollar
you gotta love a cop bar sporting mob movie posters
lower order yuppies smoking inside (last of its kind)
snow drifts on the industrial corridor, a pitted carpet

she shouts up to the fashionable lofts
WE ARE TRYING
TO HAVE
A CIVILIZATION HERE
--you are not helping
holds up deuces for the honking driver
ice cools the place where the tears have dried

how do the spaniards even poop?

their entire diet is salted meat and bread and cheese and olives

fields of heather and a museum that induces vertigo

but oranges with hard, impressive navels

everybody gets to slow dance with the girl
wrist resting on chests, a light hand hold
once before she goes
the eastern seaboard? the east coast? you wouldn't turn 52 grand down either
gets to have dinner with her
she preaches the same sermon to all of us

the city should have been big enough for all of us
it should have been enough


the third coast becomes a lakeside villa, a neverland
i'm carding her hair, i'm touching her back
i'm proud, you're beautiful, you'll be great, buy yourself so many leather goods with all that money they're throwing at you, come see me, come see me. i know you have to go, yeah you're gonna do real good.

How'd you like Django Unchained?

right, right sure

but the thing, the bit under the bridge right--

with the baseball bat and pretending to knock one out of the park

while he knocks a head in

THAT

that's violence in toto

disguised, okay

the lower order yuppies are wrapped in a tight circle

by quarter to midnight

it's frank sinatra at this point

two old polish dudes staring intently at that patterned skirt

nearer the door, nearer the bell

we're doing the same, but

you know you can cry, right?

and it all bubbles up, right out of the chest

and when e and i walk out of the bar

i'm holding her like we're walking away from a graveyard

there's a flung cigarette butt on clybourn avenue and the ground fairly sparkles at adams and monroe and if you stand on the corner of lincoln and george on a windy night the air howls through the tunnel in the telephone pole and it's the sound you might hear when the city empties out forever, along with taxi cabs still playing WBEZ and i'll expect the trucks again next week in front of my apartment to carry the crew of Chicago Fire and i'll still get on the bus in the wrong direction at Jefferson park

i rewrote the sermon

we loved it each other and it wasn't enough