I awoke one morning
To light beating through the window,
The steady hum of the city
In my bones. I was in a manic mood
Before noon, half-dressed with my hair
Standing straight from a nervous hand.
My chest throbbed with a warm weight,
A smoldering ember that expression could extinguish only.
I wrote and cried and bled
To get the vibration I was feeling
Down on paper. In vain I spewed
Collections of letters, contorted and foreign
My mind was
Shooting up skyscrapers and
Strolling down streets of shine;
I could but lust at a copy of Gatsby through a puddle of cheap wine.
I suddenly found I couldn't take my walls,
Any longer.
I forced open the window
And the city flooded my room,
Sending papers sailing. I resonated
With the silver river
And all of me cried for release.
I scrounged together clothes and wet my hair,
Then bolted out the building.
I was embraced by the world and twirled along,
Hull to hull with the lonely lot.
We, the builders of this landscape,
The elemental moving force
That hollowed these ashen canyons.
Day by day we toil along our track,
Carving deeper and wider, shifting specks,
Seamlessly, we are one-
Crisp dress shirt and an expensive smell, cracked black work boots and a ponytail.
I raised my eyes to the brilliant glare
Of the segmented sky and considered the beauty of being
A drop within a trickle.
Rushing, rushing, I flowed around corners
And broke against departmental shores.
I sought my gaze in a fifth avenue reflection but found only lips.
If people are the sea then I am the mist.
Understand me-- I felt not love for others,
But a crushing connectivity.
Drifting, drifting, I was swallowed whole by anonymity, crew and ship.
*Critiques are very much appreciated.