Tuck your chin in, brother, don’t look up,
Ball up your hands in your pockets, pal,
The Hawk is out, the definite Hawk, and
Don’t look up, no, don’t look up,
Keep that chin tucked in,
‘Cause when that lake black wind
Scuts those last year, long ago leaves up Clark Street
And they’re twisting on the corner like a dog pack snapping,
Yeah, snapping at its own tail,
Yeah, and the sky’s run down black as an eye,
Closing down the afternoon
Over those rattle-de-rap, dirty curtains over the windows in the back,
Commuter blues and scrawny ankles sticking out of Army surplus shoes,
Rattle-de-rap, Chicago Transit Authority elevated tracks,
Yeah, afternoon turning black,
Keep your chin in, brother, and walk, yeah.
It’s the Hawk out here; out here, it is the Hawk.
So best get in here, come on,
In here past the junkies huddled up on the sidewalk under the exhaust fan,
Working on their everyday is Florida tans,
Their train getting there on their very own tracks,
Yeah, just waiting on the Man,
Come on in here, this place called The Hut, best box on the street,
Come on in, man, come on.
Best box on the street and
Worst of everything else, yes, most especially
Coffee,
Pour your own, see it steaming like lava, yeah,
Hot, black, some remote second cousin to coffee’s second cousin,
Dishwater scum from –
Just a hint of LaBrea tarpit disaster in a can,
Chicago River fluvioso,
Put your mouth right
For about twenty-thirty Salems’ sour springtimes –
Coffee.
And you get you your quarter, drop it in the slot,
You got it, Annie Ross all twisted platinum soaring over
Blakey Moanin, Horace Silver Senor Blues
Profiling in his 12/8 time serape,
Golden Striker chiming, Mulligan meets Monk,
Cannonball rolling through This Here, Dat Dere,
Cannonball and Nat,
Lou Donaldson loping along that sweet Blues Walk,
Keep those quarters flowing, Jack,
Cause outside
Outside
That’s the Hawk.
But inside the steamed-over glass and the peeling concert posters
Stuck up with yellow scotch tape,
Inside, it’s long, it’s salmon-colored naugahydeˇ booths,
The edges frayed and the salmon picked away in strips,
And the grey formica scored with knives that couldn’t cut the bagels,
Yeah, and the grey formica burned brown around the edges
Where a thousand cigarettes forgot themselves and died making little troughs of tar,
And there’s some of everybody, up and down,
In one booth and out the other, circulating,
Some of everybody, college girls and hooker and cops and cons,
The clerk from the bookstore around the corner and Jimmy the boxer,
Busting out of his t-shirt back at the grill,
and Secret Music bopping his bus-tray full of greasyclean,
Clattering water glasses rattling to his private tune,
Some of everybody, some of every kind of talk,
And a sudden laugh rings out over the jukebox –
Inside, baby, steam and smoke,
It’s inside, baby, because
Outside
It is outside
baby,
That’s the Hawk.
And Hank and Irv, got to dig Hank and Irv,
Six in the sour grey A.M. til round about midnight,
One of them will be ensconced on that ratty stool back of the cash r
Registering cash, yeah, getting but never spending.
Hank with his black Chicago eyes, and Buddha was a grifter selling nirvana at 10 cents
a cup and ain’t never gonna rise,
And Irv, his Veterans’ Administration glasses doing nothing to improve his waitress-
haunching, venom launching eyes,
Mouth’s perpetual recent lemon sour turn
Gets all his energy for staying mad from staying mad til he goes home to get mad at
sleep, and Hank takes over,
Blue jowls and Camel ash dripping down his shortsleeve, maiden Taiwan,
Permanently depressed, more or less white-on-white shirt,
Whattya say, Hank, you jerk;
Hank and Irv.
Got to dig em.
No rest for the wicked priests,
Stalking those day-in, day-out dimes,
Day in, day out, Sun Times and it’s the Daily News,
And
And what you gonna talk about, hey?What you gonna talk about, 456 hours everyday, While the grey Chicago afternoon shuts down to black Chicago night,
And only the streetlight left to show how dark it is,
What you got to say, over the philosophical murmurs
And the dealers’ bop-she-bam, shades imported from Afghanistan rap,
And the pissinmoan of all the middle-aged Chicago Bears fans,
The soft jokes of the lovers hiding their holding hands in the back booths – ?
Well, to tell the truth,
Who can remember what there was to say, all those thousand hours,
All those million words, some of them true and mostly lies,
‘Cause you were just another bein’,
Coffee bein’, Vanilla bein’, Mexican Jumpin, hashish-seein’
Just another bein’, bein’ in the scene, talking the words of your life.
And that’s the scene, baby,
Even while the camera retracts its lens, back and back and back,
And Hank & Irv get smaller & smaller,
Stalking those dimes behind the counter in the front,
And the little light spilling out on the ever-waiting junkies
Huddled up for warmth under the hot air exhaust fan on the sidewalk out in front,
Getting smaller and smaller,
Just head tops and little shoes in a tiny pool of light,
Down there,
Back there,
Way far away.
Looking back down, now,
back at The Hut,
Looking back, now, it’s there,
Ain’t never gonna disappear,
Looking down
From the wings of the Hawk.
Malcolm McCollum
1965 In Loving Memory
