SIRENS FLY BY DAY AND NIGHT-Kelly Greenwood

Sirens fly by day and night

all the seniors in the highest rise

watch the Lake reach forward

then sink back and swallow itself again.

There is no happier sunrise,

no better surprise,

than the full mood of the full moon's tide

often times, it feels like I'm wasting time.

Trying to condense all the finest points

gun violence gone domestic,

watching as crack, heroin, poverty

continue to decimate the South and West sides.

It's like a modern day Holocaust

people are feeding off each other

just to stay alive,

the kids on the streets at night

thinking the poison they sell will save their lives.

You stare at a blank wall long enough

you start to go crazy

think of how it must feel

to walk through empty fields where homes once stood

dodging bullets just to get a sub-par education

in a system that's set up for failure

systematically a people are being destroyed by the dozens,
covert population control

leading them like sheep

down the path to nowhere that leads to jail,

the illusion created by gangs

the false sense of security and parental replacement

the love they never got, the money they never had,

makes it difficult to see the light

at the end of a non-existent tunnel.

If your train has derailed

get off and walk- better yet, RUN,

run like the wind,

and hope the long arm of the law

isn't the noose you've been running towards,

hope it doesn't slam you head first into

the darkened lamp post of the midnight jungle,

face first, face down- concrete

until you are just another statistic,

a modern day slave.

There are more Blacks in the American prison system today

than there were slaves in the 1800's.

(isn't that fucked up?)

Justice is a blind eye with a patch on it,

greasy palms and sticky fingers,

runny noses and itchy triggers,

the white man has ruined the black man

with subliminal messages in fast food and liquor, pawn shops,

welfare and government checks,

locked them up in high-rise cages

in hopes that maybe they'll just

destroy themselves,

that they'll all kill each other

so we can shut off the ventilator,

close the curtain, sweep it under the rug

and whitewash history one more time.

The truth only comes when it's already too late.

My heart aches,

my heart breaks

to know the inside secrets

of a supposed first-class city.

It's hard to be proud to claim allegiance

to a corrupt government

even on such a microscopic level.

A windblown city with lead on it's shoulders

she walks stooped behind the glossy finish of the exterior...

it hurts just looking

and it hurts to know that I'm in love

with something I can not fix.

I struggle to find the balance

in my world of fledgling privilege,

in the confusion, the chaos

the police of Great Divide,

to let the outsiders know that

there does exist a Chicago out there

beyond the invisible safety net of the city's North side.
-Kelly Greenwood