What are you looking at?
I’ve noticed you’ve been staring at me and of course,
behind my severity I adore the attention, but I won’t return the gaze,
well, only for a second, but the look will make you wish you were dead,
and why not, you’ve spit upon my streets, you’ve stained them with old gum,
murder and urine; you’ve hollowed me out with hot metal and traveling things.
You’ve dressed me up in endless layers of deception, advertisements
and corporate agendas and don’t you think for one moment that I haven’t
noticed how you’ve bolted and bridged me together to garner the praise
of your engineering cronies, how you’ve tried so hard to drown out the displaced
and woeful cries of our no income housing with your foodie network channels.
You’ve brought me shit and silver, the gold and the dregs of the world.
You’ve poked me through and through till I bled steam into the night.
You’ve covered my walls with lead and soot, but buffed away the spray painted
voices of the nameless masses, silenced by your appraisals of property value
and I can see you now, staring at me, but I won’t return your gaze because
it’s hard for a city like me to let down her guard and I’ve yet to forgive you for blinding me
with all the goddamned flashing artificiality, strewn across my boulevards and rooftops,
covering these old eyes and disconnecting me from my one true affection;
that handsome pitch black darkness and his dimples of a billion lights.
I cannot forgive you for making his stars and sky irrelevant.
