The (black) Hawks & Sparrows

Being a combination of a sports team and my favorite Pasolini film...

I’m sorry…
I’m not a guy who’s infected with Blackhawk fever!  

The quality of my life doesn’t hinge
upon whether or not they win the
Stanley Cup.  It makes no
difference to me; my alliance to
a sports team doesn’t make me
a winner or a loser.  In fact, I’m
already a winner in the Game 
of Life!  This doesn’t even apply 
to any other sport or team that
millions of roaring, jeering
fans adore, false gods controlled
from the skyboxes as to the
outcomes of every game.

I know,
this act alone
severed my ties to millions
of guys I could’ve befriended
or launched a casual conversation with.
Sentencing myself to a life of casual 
alienation, far from the madding crowd,
amused at the games they abuse
themselves with, while they
play around with sticks, mitts,
bats and balls, paraphernalia  
of genitalia, diverting their energies
from an unjust system, I sail away
from them all, looking back at the
chaos their apathy leaves behind.

My brother
took the path of the hawks:
pinners, baseball at Hanson Park,
hockey in the alley, then moving 
the game to the empty parking lots 
of the local bank, summer nights
lit by florescent suns and scattered
screams, while other hawks 
hatched their plans to prey 
upon sheep looking for homes 
with predatory lending.

And I followed
that path for a while because
what’s a kid to do with that
crackling energy flowing 
though his veins? 
Be a kid and
play sports!

At some point, 
something went wrong, 
a sour note of aggression poisoned the atmosphere 
of the local playground, things became too
physical, everyone clearing out of the way
as Paulie, hockey stick cocked
like a Colt .45, blasted a shot
right at me, a myopic goalie
who couldn't react until 
it was too late!

And the moment
my brother tried to drown me 
in our little backyard kiddie pool, 
our paths split like the seams
of a baseball
after it’s been hit too hard…

That’s when 
I took the path of the sparrows,
skipping through a world where 
everyone was a potential friend,
building my nest with Silver Age
Marvel comics, action figures,
even nursing a wounded sparrow 
back to health. 
There’s a rare Polaroid 
of me, in yellow shirt and brown pants 
with salmon colored square pockets, 
hands cupping 
this sweet bird of my youth.

I turned 
my back on those
parking lot wars, and withdrew
into galleries of books, wandering 
through a landscape of hazy emotions, 
as opposed to the working-class 
slum that was Lorel avenue 
comprised of Polish and Italian 
immigrants who left their own native 
slums in search of the American dream.

While he 
gathered his/our friends 
into the damp womb of our parent’s 
basement (as budding cavemen
are wont to do) to open up his own club,
(it wasn’t sweetly mischievous 
like the Little Rascals), but there
was some potential when I 
tried to rock the place with
a home-made band fumbling
its way through “Smoke on 
the Water”.  That’s when I fell 
in love with the Farfisa organ, 
realizing I could make 
my own music!

But soon 
a cloudy haze of pot smoke 
soaked the air, lit by the light
of the TV which always blared 
out the latest Cubs, Sox, Bulls 
                             or Hawks game.
And the fire of that music was
doused by liquor parties, where
the utility sink served as 
their Roman vomitorium.

Then drugs 
finally seeped through
the cracks of the basement.
Some guys would trance out,
others would slam chairs
on the concrete floor in some
unknown rage, my brother
thought I was a punching bag, 
sending me into a catatonic
state for weeks after…

And when the Blackhawks 
won the Stanley Cup in 2010, 
100s of 1000s of you filled the 
streets raising shouts of victory.  
Not a real threat to public safety, 
although all the cameras were there 
catching every move of the swarming
mobs of people flowing through 
Michigan Avenue, just like the river 
flowing alongside Wacker Drive
                                 a few blocks away.
The fans were there to yell and cheer 
because a Chicago team won
something.  They weren’t there to
protest the cameras that watched
them, all that human energy wasted, 
while you all got wasted, drowned
in beer and other drugs; there were 
so many of you fans determined
to go into the city that day, that 
the trains were packed to the gills, 
like in New York, Tokyo or India.  
The victory you were celebrating
was a hollow ironic one, and you
were all too drunk on your own
bacchic energies to see it.

You weren’t there 
to protest the wars for which we’re 
expected to “Support Our Troops”, 
for not to support them would be 
more blasphemous than the Ugandans
in The Book of Mormon when they 
happily sang: “Hasa Diga Eebowai” 
(go ahead and look that up)…

Yes, that’s what they sang…

And you didn’t rush the stage 
then either; not for women’s
genital mutilation, not for the
colossal musical tribute to Satan. 
You just sat there and laughed your 
asses off, perhaps a bit too much,
amazed and tragically saddened by how far 
tolerance’s envelope has been pushed,
how far you fell for being victims
of a well-disguised diabolical ritual…

But what 
will you do, my fellow Chicagoans, 
when the global financial ponzi scheme 
comes crashing down, the banks’
doors suddenly slam shut, its
phony fiat currency devalued, 
the wafers of digital currency
forced down your throats, 
lockdowns, or martial law?  
                                        Will you
flood the streets again to send
a message to City Hall, or the 
whole world for that matter
(for won’t the whole world be 
watching, more now than in 1968?).  

Reduced to sparrows eking out your 
daily bread, you felt like winners because 
you aligned yourselves with the team,
wore their jerseys, t-shirts, logos,
etc. and thought: “This will validate
my life!”  But you still have to work, 
pay bills, send kids to school; so are
the hawks going to take care of all that?!

The real hawks are busy doing other things…

And yet, 
as I write these words,
a chant of voices echo in LaSalle
street’s canyon below, watched
over by a pensive crow from atop
the Northern (mis)Trust Bank as
storm clouds gather above the city.
I can’t tell what they’re protesting
and hope it has nothing to do 
with the Blackhawks, but
rather the real ones whose
injustices plague the cities of
the world on a daily basis.  
After all, that’s what you get 
when you make a deal to release 
Barabbas rather than Jesus.

Now once again in 2015
red jerseys from the street flow 
like blood platelets through La Salle 
Streets’ gray arteries.  There’s a lot of 
red corpuscles down there, red energy, 
red aggression.  And Reebok’s pockets jingle 
like Santa Claus’ rucksack.  The NHL’s having 
a financial orgasm! Street corners boil over 
with ancillary merchandise gobbled up 
by every passerby.

My brother
dead a mere 4 months ago
must be thrilled perched atop
his literal skybox, looking down 
from a distance higher than where 
I am right now.  Life’s hockey puck 
slammed into his heart (shot and
a goal!) and up he flew into that
heavenly stadium in the sky.

But through 
the drunken revelry and half-assed 
high-fives of camaraderie I can just 
make out a tear flowing down the 
cheek of the Blackhawk’s eye, just like 
Iron Eyes Cody when he looked at us 
in that 1971 PSA, at how the world 
was growing more fucked up by the 
carload along America’s highways.

Keep America Beautiful…yeah, sure…

God forbid you really knew what Beauty was!

Your energies
could have been harnessed
to raise the vibrations of the planet,
instead that multicolored river has
been diverted into worshipping
another corporate logo.  

Oh 
United 
Spectators of 
Apathy,
what would be wrong 
with throwing a bash to 
celebrate our new world,
one of freedom and prosperity;
to choke streets, boulevards,
thoroughfares and country sides?!
A parade celebrating nothing less
than our liberation from a corrupt
e-con-oh me, and the glorious reign
of paradise on Earth?   
Not for just another
sports team, but a victory of Team
Humanity over the forces of Evil?