O Beautiful, For City Streets

I am interested in all of this shouting
because when has this happened
in the last hundred years?

When has America danced?
When have we poured
into the streets, over the barricades--
and not for AIDS protests, or national debt--
but national pride?

Honestly I'm happy to
see the city-slicker turn-coat commie-pinkos
dance and shout and cry
"this is America giving a shit!"

Think of the art: all the
joyous, beautiful art which will pour
perhaps a bit too percipitously--
a little too like pent up streams and dams burst forth--
but at least not bitter wounds and bile ducts bursting.

The red midwest has always been
limpid, devoid of expression, growing
grain and old as the years pass. Give me
blue Chicago in the night, wailing it's love

to the reverberate Hilton's. Think of it
like sex, a massage, the Cubs winning the World-Series,
releasing the toxins of the pent up Northeast
into the air, dispersing hatred, breeding love.

Let the farms and the countryside sulk,
for tonight I indulge the City's rejoicing
--and pray--
only that we touch not the other extreme
but that magnanimity may overtake us all.