by John Paul Davis

i used to live in a good neighborhood

till the yuppies

moved in with their dogs

and started letting them crap on and eat

everything in sight,

including my fiancee's tulips

that she spent a whole day of her life

last fall planting.

i remember her coming into the apartment after a long

hard day of digging and troweling and dropping bulbs

and sinking her arms into the dirt

and her back hurt and she was sunburned and tired.

but we never got to see any of the flowers

because the yuppies let their dogs

walk on and eat the buds

before they had time to bloom.

i know it was them because i saw my neighbor

last night letting his irish setter

trample all over the remains of my finacee's

day of labor, and i suppose

i can't be too mad at him, after all, he was still

coming down off of whatever speed he'd scored.

i walked outside to give him a piece of my mind

but was distracted by the neighborhood

black kids, who were chillin on a metal bench,

mimicking the latest hip-hop superstar

and i knew the words

so i was all about to rap along

when chicago police patrol car #7056

pulled up onto the sidewalk, lights blaring

stopped in front of the kids.

two cops got out and began to frisk the kids, one by one,

while they leaned their teenage bodies up against the hood

of patrol car #7056 and waited.

the whole thing lasted maybe 30 minutes,

and when i called 911 to report police harassment,

i was informed politely

that it was perfectly legal for police officers

to search people on the street without cause

and that there was nothing i could do about it.

"there has to be brutality before we can intervene"

the operator told me,

and i thought, well it's pretty brutal to spend your

adolescent years being searched for drugs you don't have

because you happen to be black and awake after 8 p.m.

"well that's awfully convenient for the cops isn't it?"

is what i told the operator.

needless to say,

i was having an off night

and it was made worse by watching a news brief

about this smarty-pants religious right

pastor named joe wright who had the gall to pray

before a state legislature

and confess the so-called "sins"

of america. multiculturalism is now against the ten

comandments according to the reverend wright,

but curiously, in his list of american sins

he left out racism altogether. no mention

of 400 years of slavery and segregation,

no mention of white american churches, their eyes

sewn shut, their hearts hardened, their ears

closed when the whips cracked to the cadence of the 3/5ths law,

or jim crow, deaf to the crack of the bullets

that felled dr. king and brother minister malcolm,

so i poured myself a cup of coffee,

sat on the front steps,

wondered if i should be moses

and pray for God to have mercy on my stupid country

or be jeremiah and call down our just desserts,

but instead i just whimpered and sipped coffee and stared

at my trampled tulips

and when i looked up from the tulips,

just for a moment, i wasn't on my front step

but standing on a shining beach, my back

warm in the sun,

watching the masts of spanish sails

poke over the horizon

and i swear i could see christopher columbus,

the "christ-bearer" himself, leaning over the railing

of the ship,

looking for a place to walk his dog.

Chicago Il, April 1999