Afraid of Big Cities

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.

Titled In Bold Below

Stay Tough Champ

There are algorithms that can predict
If you are a follower, or an innovator
They take your entire life and break it down
Into the analytics of your free-will

Urbanization is like an experiment
Where people are compressed
Into smaller places, trained
Where everyone is trying to be like

Everyone else, the same as being no one
We are taught to search for stability
Our parents remind us to start saving young
But what if, the entire system is unsustainable?

Economics like so many things, are the domain
Of dead white men from Europe
Old elite families who like to believe
They pull the puppets of the world

Social psychology can’t keep up with change
Neither can art, it just has its lucky super stars
Like some kid the New York times calls a prophet
Who appears to be some kind of junkie

There are algorithms that are trained on your data
What you buy, what you view on the internet
What kinds of people you are social with
What keywords you search, what kind of porn you watch

And it’s a disenchanting process to be reduced
To a trend, but experience is so inauthentic these days
There are these same internet sites everyone goes to
And we are raised to be strong, independent, alone

It’s elusive to be happy when we are disconnected
In our essential connectedness, like being
Surrounded by social media without true intimacy
So much for being a catalyst that turns misery into art.