West Wicker Park, West Wicker Park.
Valley of ashes and cigarette sparks 
Metra rail slithers on its grimy track
We watch one another, we watch another’s back

“I love you madly, I love you in pain," said he
"Go to bed, you drunkard," said she
Six years of marriage he downed in a swig
The grumble in his gullet was that of a pig
She ordered a taxi to her very good friend Will
She too indulged, mixing Jack and Jim with a bottle of pills

See the restless young neighbor who was driven insane
By the tap tap tap in the kitchen drain
He picked at his hairline and he picked at the lock
With the image of his sweetheart affixed to the clock
He went stumbling and moaning into the dark
And so acquainted his mind with West Wicker Park.

The drifter on the corner, of aged and aging perversion
Pleasured himself with a needled excursion
He conjured far within that tar-sodden mind
Raw skin, raw throats of those boys he’d left behind
A rider on the storm of that West Town square
Perhaps to salvage his soul, he’d douse his body in prayer

Lengthened days and shortened nights
A gridlock, certainly, of inescapable plights
Here is Humboldt, here is Bucktown, here is West Wicker Park
Begot so tenderly
Divided from the high life
By a green and rotting boundary