city kids

fulfilling some kind of self-indulgent new yorker ideology

we are the empty sky where subway road meets wrist, 

blue city-pulses looting stems that twist into map foundations

at the side of our caricature conglomerates

of sea and sunrise and shame "

eating dust by the road and we’re calling it clean.

the crackling speaker, cheap songs on the ancient radio, we say

it’s a metaphor for a bygone era of sex and drugs and

what we wish we could call beautiful, when really it was

ugly as the city when the lights fall silent "

the stench of fast food festering inside us,

arms and legs and branches melding into golden headlights like worms.

we are tangible saline emptiness in our citifying hearts,

just visible if you squint between the blood on our knuckles

and the sundrenched concrete beneath our heels "

forging art from brass and cities, naming the sunset

and the blood ‘bohemia’ and proclaiming it our home.

we are clouds flecked with grey, emblazoned with rain, 

passing through the skyscrapers that snatch at us;

metallic digits wavering, heavenspread

city-solid arms begging for renewal.

we are angels taking pride in what we lack, under

wide brims of black hats and hiding shriveled up

inside our skirts and boots and shivering brown eyes,

wind whipping through us to carry out our poems and promises and goodbyes said

standing on the brink of the visionary’s nirvana,

what we meant in the seconds between solitude and solidarity

and forgot when we entered the subsequent freefall,

breathing dust on diner napkins and scattering it into the sunrise,

wiping salty iron french-fry seconds from our red-lipped microphones,

proclaiming ourselves holy as we wipe the dust from our thighs, and sing,

another day, rolling peace of mind between a crucifix and the map of a subway station.

we are ugly reclaimed, scrawling BEAUTY in our

bold ironic typeset, loud and large and throbbing

with our iridescent desire to live and scream and be,

across the city-veins, all over the world, remember this,

write it in blood and keep it locked in your heart, tell it to

the generations when they ask who we were;

we are beauty in our dirty shoes and whirring subway howls.