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Tear This Building Down

J. Quinn Brisben




I recall a clear memory from 1964
In this new millennium while watching
The slow and mostly unreported
Demolition of the high-rise ghettos
Called Robert Taylor Homes, forty years
A failure, bringing misery to those
Confined by overseers and masters
Of the poor on Chicago’s South Side.
The bosses were certain they knew best.

The buildings one by one are stripped
And blindly stare for months before
Finally leaving a hole in the air, and,
For those who had to be there, a whiff
Of urine from elevators and stair wells,
A sight overlaid in mind by the searing
Fireball of last September repeated
Endlessly as the innocent were crushed
And the calls for revenge boomed
From ass’s jawbones braying death.

The pungent memory returns unasked
Of a late night on North Halsted Street
The fall after the Freedom Summer:
It being Sunday, Gary Davis sang no blues
Before midnight. The blind back man was
A preacher after all, even in those fumes
Of tobacco and booze. The crowd wanted
His famous song about Samson, the one
Covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary, except
We wanted his Delta rasp and grit,
The down home hurt of it, acknowledging
His triumph over systematic terror,
His overflowing rage between
Levees built of chords and sweat.

“If I had my way in this wicked world“
And then that night he chose not to say
The rest which we knew anyhow but
Banged his palm on the guitar’s shell
Saying “Whomp!” and up close after
The furious slap you could hear
The faint scratch of callused finger tips,
Recalling the returning Godly power
Of the man once deluded by the ways
Of the Philistines and their temptresses,
Blinded, chained, and mocked in the
Thronged temple of the idol Dagon in Gaza,
Pressing his callused hands on the pillars,
Dying with the glory of crushing more
Thousands of God’s enemies and of course
People who just happened to be there
Than in the rest of his holy-war life.

We applauded this superb retelling
Of a story three thousand years old
By a brave and righteous old man
Singing for his oppressed people,
Whom we would help all we could,Sharing their outrage but hoping
For better justice than endless
Crushed bodies forever. I loved it.
I am not sorry for that. He was
A great artist performing a classic.

But, as I watch the shamefaced
Dismantling in an oil-consuming jam
On the Dan Ryan Expressway now,
I realize why the Gaza mob might
Have cheered last September,
Although the cheering might have been
An ass-jawbone lie, and I pledge
Never to cheer for death again.







Scars Publications


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