Being Eaten by the Big Apple
The big cities can kill you
Like how they can make you poor in a month
It’s unforgiving to move
To a bit city if you are poor
In debt, alone, or any of the above
New York, Toronto, Tokyo
What’s the difference, they swallow
The soul, perhaps we should avoid them
There are too many people
On any given corner to get
Through, to reach your destination
Unless you become one of them
Cold, hardened, not stopping for
Just any homeless man, walking over
Their old guitar, not crying in public
There are days I have no retrospect
I have purposefully forgotten
Some of the Godless situations I’ve lived
It’s for the better I think, I wouldn’t
Want to live with the humiliation
The wide-dilated embarrassment of pupils
And fear it took to communicate abandonment
The insomnia of old wounds rubbing sweat
All over my half-starved body
Everything was a ghost and I’d pray
In my own rituals for God to
Show me a life beyond this
I remember not feeling rationale or sincere
I remember imagining acquaintances
Were friends or people in coffee shops
Were people I could get to know
Adversity does strange things to you.
Great poem as always.
Here´s a challenge I got if you want to take it up that is. I actually found it quite hard, but you´re a much better writer. So here´s the link in case you have time and want to do it.
https://idiotwriting.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/love-in-ten-lines-challenge/comment-page-1/#comment-17501
This reminds me of something I learned this semester…written in the early 20th century, a Sociologist dismissed because of anti-antisemitism. He studied the Metropolis and the blasé attitudes it created. As I studied it, I only wondered what he would say about the big cities now. This poem is amazing.
Thanks Tanya, your insights to this are fascinating.