Chicago Drowns

We wind our way downtown from the north,
Block by block the neighbourhoods mutate,
The ornate capitalist hymn of Lake Forest,
Gives way to Hispanic sectors, then black blocks,
Jeeps shaking to the bass boom of hip hop.

In our car a Tracy Chapman CD plays low,
It feels like I'm in some trite MTV featurette,
Aiming for "edutainment" but instead regurgitating stale images,
Of repression to smaning Buttheads the world over.

This segregation in straight lines is so strange,
To English eyes accustomed to more intimate integration,
London's mixed and unmatched streets where white poets,
Groove to urban beats with sitar strings and other things,
Now seem a precious blessing.

Later, we fetch up in the centre of the city,
Under the racing gothic clouds which part and hurry,
Around and over the summit of the John Hancock Building,
From where I look out to the lake and catch a horizon,
Full of devious intent.

There's a storm cooking in those boiling black cumulonimbus,
And as my pasta imitates the weather in the restaurant kitchen,
I sit shivering by the open window,
A sudden thunderclap announces the drama,
Of God's prodigious piss,

And Chicago drowns.