Chi-town (x) changes.

400 years after Columbus got lost
a real Indian in a single saffron robe said

  holiness is not the exclusive possession of any church

Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Art Institute
came to the World's Fair a bag handler

  left a prophet

was there a city more perfect
for these words to sputter into railcars
travel west and sky scrape the heavens

a city more able to pack these words into boxcars
preserve them with Great Lake ice shavings
send them thru channels down the Mississippi

are there any residents in greater need of them
in closer quartered ethnic blocks: back of the yard side street saloons
where bottles magically broke over the heads of Polocks
in the German stout house
where white boys beat black boys in Bridgeport
where Jews and Asians and Rickey Birdsong are moving targets
where Arab American Action Networks are firebombed
this monster of progress, city of the future
who calls the desperate and desolate to construct
the skeleton holding its big shoulders

all of us immigrants
who dig and lift and hull and punch
industry's time clocks, ticking rapidly
pulling the world thru warp speed

our city
whose heart paved over prairies and Pottawattamie
our Chicago
wild onion, skunk weed lot where lotus children hope to blossom

capital of the Midwest
center of the New World
who promised jobs to freed slaves
and the pious fleeing pogroms, butcher shop factories
where broken english speakers laid lives like precision parts
for an 8 hour workday

it is happening here

in Taquerias
when kids from Lawndale
cross 26th St. and order a burrito

when DJs dig record bins on Devon and hear hip-hop in Bangra

every Sunday, in Uptown
Our Lady of Lord parishioners spill onto the corner of Leland and
Ashland
cool off with paletas / elotes / spanglish hymnals mix with stone soup
hippy kids

in Bronzeville
NOI BBQ's with big hated women
who praise Jesus 84 times a day

in West Rogers Park
Hassids walk Sabbath streets, a black sea of hats
Muslim neighbors greet them with Salaam
lessons line the lakefront
in every multi-ethnic pick-up game
from Edgewater to South Shore:
all knees bleed when scraped

it is happening
in 1st grade
in the 1st generation
when 53 different countries
come to school
for the 1st time

it's teaching Gandhi to teach Thoreau to teach King in High School
English Classes
it's a Jew whose best friend is Muslim, whose teaching partner is
Afro-Cuban
in the city where i met the Dalai Lama's nephew
and the 1st thing he asked for was whiskey

in this city i learned cultures like train lines are numerous
like beauty shops and currency exchanges on 63rd St.
or yellow labs and jetta baby strollers in Wrigleyville

the clamor of languages
whispered at refugee center ESL classes, packed to capacity
when the teacher asks why the journey to come here
answers ricochet off Sears Tower SBC satellites
ringing like liberty bells

  this is where freedom dreams can come true

here
where Falzur Rahaman took long walks in Hyde Park
and must of heard the takwa of men playing the Dozens at Valois

it is here where Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King met
where Saul Alinksy organized churches, mosques and synagogues
where Jane Addams birthed the American Settlement House movement
where Muslims are rounded up for the difficulty of pronouncing their
last name

it is here where we argue over the Cubs and Sox
rep the west and south sides like countries and get nervous
to be across borders late night in unfamiliar territory
it is here where neighborhoods sag together
where we are forced to smell each other's dinner
hear each other's arguments thru thin tenement walls

we sit on the same school boards, in the same buses
we used cheer for the Bulls the same, marveling at Michael's air
acrobatics

we read the same newspapers
kick off the same discussions in taverns
and diners and train stations and barbershops
and Jamatkana's and Yoga Studios and Kabbala classes
about weather and wind, here among the forest
of glass and steel, in the shadows of 77 neighborhoods
we can behold the infinite holding the multi-hued hands
of mothers worshipping in a thousand tongues

here hope can grow like community gardens or condos

it's our choice how we handle interfaith actuality
reality is the Maxwell Street Market

every Sunday
where there is a little something
for everyone and everyone can come
and walk and talk and eat and gawk
and everyone is always welcome

1. Genesis 15:12

2. Boogie Down Productions, "Love's Gonna Getcha" from the Edutainment album

3. Genesis 21:13