City Thoughts

Just a few things I thought up while spending the day in the city

What Matters

What are we all here for?

Our depraved little egos inside tell lies

That every single thing we do matters

And every person we meet is important

These comfort us from out own mortality

And dissuade our existential crises.

Me, being here, is making a change

But what about everyone else?

Am I the only one that matters?

The more people there are, the less I matter.

I become even more obsolete and hidden

In masses of people thinking the same thought:

"What I am doing matters."

What I am doing is important,

But gets lost in the group of hundreds

Yet there can't be hundreds without the one

And no ideas without individuals

The more people there are the less I matter

But without me, there is no "people"

Because we each matter to the whole.

So which is true, or are both true, or wrong?

Is it all just a cruel paradox?

An Old Street Corner

I passed by an aged church today

With few windows and worn grey brick.

Gazing up I noticed the spire-like steeple

With yellow stained glass glittering,

Sunlight passing through perfectly

Like a fire flickering lighthouse at night.

Though it was a tired old church,

It had a certain majesty in its simplicity.

Past it was a rusted chain link fence

Surrounding a pavemented little park.

There was a slide every color of the rainbow

That glowed vibrantly against stone slate.

But that was in its better days,

Now the colors are dulled and lackluster

And lack the vibrancy to entice youth

Like it made so many memories long ago.

On the other side was a plot of leafless trees

Deflowered by long winter and rough season.

They stretched out spindling branches

Creaking with every winter gale that passed.

Two stood together on the lifeless soil

So far from touching, too close to be lonely.

Their bark melds with the grim city color

Forgetting their summer beauty in the cold.

Cracks and crevices litter the asphalt

With icy residents slipping in the slits.

Dusty brown snow lines the sidewalk

Sitting aside homes streaked by grime

That crumbles and eats at the walls

Until rotted wood riddles the poor squatter.

But I walked with the depressed pavement

Because to me, its just an old street corner.