Chicago Town Killers

There were streets like bombed out cities,
Canyons and craters filled with water.
Rubble on the sidewalk where you're walking
a vacuum to hear yourself talking.

There were unmarked places, unclaimed lands,
wildness growing crazy from the ground.
Then there was cement and I savored the sound
of machines tearing that wild thing down.

So far, so far.
So far to fall my city,
And how you've gone from white to gray.
How the blood smells don't go away,
We're all covered in it.

With our eyes like blue marbles
I lead you across the road.
In the way of oncoming traffic
I tighten my grip on your wrist,
feel the flesh, the blood, the bone.

We were the center of slaughter once,
and born to me were the hands of a slaughterer,
who's to say they won't act up now,
before you reach the other side safely?
The fingers that held the knife that sliced
a thousand necks,
Man's another animal isn't he?

There was white paint peeling off buildings like skin,
And in the great fires, they changed us, they slew us, they skinned us.
In some great act of Shakespearean tragedy,
They slaughtered the slaughterers.

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