Your children roam the gridlocked streets
hand-in-cardboard, feet firmly on uneven ground,
eyes heavy with the rubble of their foreclosed homes.
They live in grocery carts.

Forget Fifth Avenue, or the Villages,
or the cobblestone streets of young and old,
or the unseen gates of Striver’s Row.
Your heart lies by the subway stations
that ring with the songs of a lonely old man,
his teeth yellowed, but voice golden,
asking not for introductions nor coin,
but for a listener.

New York, they cry for you to hear them.
(Your poor, your tired, and your weary)

Bowery, 6.13.15.

This door you might not open, and you did;
  So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed. . . .  Here is no treasure hid,
  No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
  For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see. . . .  Look yet again—
  An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
  Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
  Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
  This now is yours.  I seek another place.

You or I could be lepers.
Or hideously deformed.
If we are it shouldn't matter.
Photography, mixed up and twisted.
Reborn.
Pictures misted.
Just who are you chatting to today?
Mentally.
physically.
internet voices.
Distorted.
Misinformed choices.
Maybe just genuine liars,
Getting kicks.
Turning tricks
Preying on others.
Taking the biscuit.
You could be an angel
Or one who follows you on cycle paths,
(PSYCHOPATHS)
Mental health issues falling out off your ears.
No problem with mental health issues.
Been there.
Done it.
Or better still put them onto your paper.
Best place to put them.
If you ask me.
Maybe a sliver of communion wafer.
Selling religion for half a crown.
Maybe half a silver dollar.
Ripping you off.
While doffing his hat.
Pretending to be,
What you can't see.
Words of naïveté.
From she who is down.
Unless you really know the one on the screen.
Be ever so careful and I'm not being mean.
(c) Livvi MMCV

in this black room
i see a red and two greens
and a yellow under the door
and an orange being nosey through the window