New York: concurrently schizophrenic
I like the sounds of New York.
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Roaring, buzzing, whizzing, grunting.
Energizing. Not stopping.
Sucking its people,
its people sucking marrow from life.
Its sense of bloodiness,
its sense of zen chaos.
The random rootedness of its fringe.
The hustle as desperation and joy.
The inner churning of the white collars.
The impossibilities of cessations.
The danger of its demeanors.
The character beneath its finds.
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The wounds in its music.
The joy of its art.
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The blood which connects its people.
The mistrust which strains at its peace.
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The invitation to our gravest depravity.
The hustle towards our fantasies.
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The incredulity of what's possible.
The limitations of the common thought.
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The passion of the shrunken world.
The possibilities of conquering every world.
The time-datedness of the fanciful-new.
The nostalgia for the timeless old.
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The assimilation of the good and ugly.
The sensitivity of understanding space.
The street performance to die for.
The pain of a citizen dying.
The assimilator of a thousand cuts
The color lines which run deep.
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The zaniness of its music.
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The bodies which know how to sway.
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The aloneness of the old.
The lovers who don’t know how to grow old.
The fulfilment of illusions.
The air which blows love away.
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New York takes as much as you can give.
New York gives as much as you can take.
Do listen to the poem, and lose yourself to the voice and the music!
Whenever I travel to USA, wherever I might be, I try to come back through New York. It is a magnet to my senses. I could stand for hours in its art galleries, but also days on its streets. Sometimes as an onlooker, sometimes as a part of its unending swirl. The city's smoke and movement, it's glittering heights and its grimy innards, its populace with purpose, the hopelessness of its hobos. Its glass, its ostentation, its purpose, its hope, its possibilities. The way the city assimilates me into its poetry, the way its hardness empties me and its art fills me, New York is a sensory overload.
And it changes hues, borough to borough, bridge to bridge, suburb to suburb. And as I travel, I am filled with the confusion of the person who wants to pin down a city into a pithy phrase. For within this one city lie a hundred possible faces. The arty, the grimy, the soaring, the sparing, the vulgar, the simple. And the definitions come as a smorgasbord of meanings and possibilities. The way we are, the way all of us are - never one, always multidimensional, always a contributor, always a purveyor. Often a victim, often a voyeur, often a little bright, ever so often unmitigatingly sad.
New York, concurrently schizophrenic, indeed.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems with a city as its backdrop -
An uncut follower
Wow! You've captured all the facets of pulsating NY. The fulfillment; the depravity; the adrenaline rush; the courage of keeping pace.... Sure feel the heartbeat of the city in your renderings