The rain falls, the light rises, darkness caresses the city
Passing cars and passed out pedestrians pile on
Darkness and moisture cling to what is not

Illuminated streets from billboards, street lamps, and storefronts
These passing lights fool me into thinking it is day
It is Night

Smoke from the sewers dance around me as I walk through
Will the beating rhythm of cars and shouts ever sleep?
A city that never sleeps

Colors glide over the sodden streets, through thunderous rain
A storm that beats down, hard, ambient, ever present
Inexorable tides of water from the sky

Headlights blind but never linger, as I walk my hustled step
In and around the grid that weakens the foolhardy
But rises those up, just the same

Thousands of buildings, thousands of droplets, all meeting each other
Those skyward skyscrapers are the swords into the clouds
Meeting them with their stand

New York meets everything with pushback
Umbrellas against the wet, Brutality against the poor, Sorrow against the weak
Love-hate calls to them

I stare across the river, to the skyscrapers of another world
Nothing to the majesty and soul crushing weight I get to walk under
A concrete welcome to The Jungle

All that is will be undone, those lights, those cars, those wonders
I among them fade into antiquity, my footprints lost into the washing grime
All is nothing against Time