*i don’t know if I’ve posted this before, but it’s true today perhaps more than any other

apology to lit x

it was renaissance
the blue line roaring victoriously overhead
a haiku scrawled over gang scratches
pierced my nose
the sharp smell of permanent marker
i gushed gratitude
walking wicker park
thankful to be welcomed to share words

the millennium came
and chicago was ripe
we came together
ellingtons and hurstons
ellisons and hughes
everyone so hungry
to be heard

generation lit x built us a harlem
over piles of dripping pizza
and styrofoam cups of generic cola
we chewed eagerly
tinkering with our narratives
equals at the table with the citys literati

walking division in april fog
i turned to amanda
“i feel so privileged, you know?
to be surrounded by so many brilliant people
we are heirs to the new harlem renaissance.
its right now”

she nodded solemnly

i dreamed naively of pink gardenias
vibrating in our hair
voices coursing through the petals
basement meetings
bourbon stained typewriter paper
coffee spills and spirals of cigarette smoke
hanging languidly over pre-pulitzer poems and plays

what did they have, i demand
bitterly of a breaking black sky

Artists destroy each other
We love each other too savagely
Community is only the illusion
jazz hands for grants and benefactors
the saccharine veneer over a broken circle
of ex-lovers, fellow smokers,
ambiguous rapists and their harlot victims

an apology to lit x
and all the other builders
godparents of chicago word and sound
for razing your altars to the metropolis muses
for clawing apart your renaissance
with our post-adolescent libidos
and irreconcilable envy

i was a hopeful apprentice
to the kingdom of griots
scribbling memoirs on torn paper
with the princelings

I am sorry, Mama
ashamed to be of the same litter
too many Cains dagger-splitting the belly of his brothers poem

Mecca Harlem Wicker Park
dreams sagging explosive on the vine
an apology
so much hate
poison driving electric
through your blue veins