A Gruesome Valentine's Day Poem by Joseph T. Renaldi

Valentine's Day 1929 began like most winter days
in Chicago, Illinois with gray skies and stinging cold.
A light covering of snow powdered the city streets.
Shops opened for Holiday customers, anxious and bold.
Excited children prepared cards and Valentine treats.

Inside of a dull garage on North Clark Street
in a usually quite residential neighborhood,
a number of hoodlums gathered for purposes unknown,
soon to be excuted by rivals of another brotherhood.
Victims of one of the most unsolved crimes known.

A big, black car turned onto North Clark Street.
It stopped in front of a humdrum garage.
Several men got out of the car-two were policemen.
They entered the garage like an unwanted mirage,
and pointed their weapons at the gathering of startled men.

The startled men were lined up shoulder to shoulder.
The intruders fired their Tommy-Guns at their foe,
and in a haze of sprayed machine gun-fire and roar,
bullets tore through flesh from head to toe.
Blood surged across the cold concrete floor.

Some men died instantly, some gasped briefly for air.
Out on Clark Street, neighbors heard a popping sound
which some took to be the sound of a backfiring car.
Others heard the deaperate barking of a hound.
They were unaware that a massacre had taken place not far.

A few curious neighbors peered out of their windows.
They saw men leaving the garage and getting into a car.
Two policemen were leading several men at gunpoint.
The car sped south on clark Street with a door ajar,
and disappeared from sight creating another viewpoint.