New York City
Aren’t you just the most glamorous thing?
Decked out in towering skyscrapers?
Lapped at the edges by water?
Every inch is something:
Buildings, people, specks of green respite.

You sleep.
Only in certain areas
Times Square.
Awful, just awful.
The signs illuminate a path.
But the core is dead quiet.
4 am and a few tourists get a Starbucks
2 other folk get a slice.
Mostly just silence, even a weekday at 6am.

But you got them all fooled.
Do they know you stink?
Rows of streets waiting for trash collection.
That rotting putrid perfume you have in July.
You broil them too.
After sounding them down 2 it 3 flights of stairs
Teetering and wobbling with oversized luggage
Praying for safe passage or help (keep praying!)
Lugging the stroller
Then you just blast them
With an August furnace to melt their epidermis away.
The real lucky folk get an un air conditioned car.

Your people aren’t rude, necessarily.
Just killing themselves to pay your bills
They got no time for chit chat with a 4000 rent
They don’t want your new album
Your pamphlet
They don’t want anything you got that can’t help then make a buck.

New York your grimey
Your homeless and broke
Litter subways and pile up in neighborhoods
But they write songs about you.

Old songs.
Were you better than?
If I had to write you a song
It would be a blues number
Blues for sure.