I love you, New York. New York, I love you.

by Sarah Jane Souther

Interesting, isn’t it, how we can say we love a place so

Lonely and looming as this:

Overwhelmed by lights and glamor

Voracious in it’s appetites and

Ever wheedling with promises of more.

Yellow sunlight creeps over Columbus avenue, 

Open eyes stare into Tuesday’s empty beginnings

Unique fingerprints painting coffee cups, painting children, yet

No one seems to notice.

Everyone isolated but not quite alone.

We’re inundated by constant exultations of excess

Yearning hearts deceived by the propaganda machine, 

Open to all the stories vying for our attention and 

Ready, always, to cater to the little gods within us. This is

Kinesis on a metropolitan level. And there’s

Nothing so paralyzing as this myriad of stimuli

Everything screaming, bow at the throne of yourself, and then

Wonder gets hit by a taxi at 73rd and broadway and

You see it all from the coffee shop on the corner.

Oh, you thought the city was writing a symphony just for you?

Retrain your ears, listen for a different tune, it’s a

Killer song but it’s not the one your mother sang at bedtime,

It’s like heavy metal underground,

Like the clash of an electric guitar meeting subway tracks,

Optimism getting blown up by the bassline,

Variety, dissonance, harmony, thrown in a blender, but

Each time you tap your foot with the rhythm

You get closer to matching this frenetic beat. And remember,

Obscurity can only swallow the static ones. So can you feel it now,

Underneath the concrete, that heart that pulses as it convulses your own?