The City

With his hat cocked over one
Eye
(for the ladies, and for glamour.)
Meandering through
A cacophony of indulgences
Strewn on a barren plain of
Hedonism.
A mirage of lucidity
In that same eye,
(still completely unaware.)
Prosperity an illusion,
Depravity engulfing it.
“Foolish wanderer!
Purveyor of Nietzschean complexities!”
Whose shoulder brushes a pig – tailed girl
Garbed in the epitome
Of innocence.
(Except for small digressions,
Such as the shirt exposing
Her undeveloped navel.)
Now like Pomona,
yet destined to
Submit to a barrage of
Society’s emaciation complex.
(And its related advertisements.)
Like all the other flowers,
(Crushed by a gust of wind
exhaled by a not quite omniscient
God.)
But for now,
She walks,
And with little thought of magnitude,
She tosses an unimportant penny
To a beggar,
Completely devoid of eloquence.
Entertaining contemplations of a
.357 to his temple.
Protected solely by his unkempt hair.
(Accumulating the grease of
Immorality shed by the
Slightly inconsiderate city.)
Comforted by the sometimes silent,
Sometimes deafening clang of
A reminder of better days.
His only respite,
Comes from spare change,
Dropped into his impoverished chalice
by the storekeeper every day
Who walking with an uneven tread,
His foot wandering,
Only to be brought back again by his resolve.
Honed by experience,
And by foolish errors.
For “experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
Or at least that’s what he read in his
Tattered copy of Wilde ever present on his bedside table.
He had tasted success,
And ambition devoured it,
consumed it,
And continued to feed off it.
But consumed by avarice,
His morals lay bare on the fractured sidewalk
of his past.
And with this he taps the cold disk
that calls forth the quiet “ching”
Calling for payment where payment is due.
But he doesn’t look up.
At the man with his hat
Cocked over one
Eye
As he walks through the cold metal door,
Lost in itself so much that it does not realize
It is a portal to
Discovery.
And the man steps through the
Gleaming opening,
And for the first time sees the city,
For its radiant tributes to Apollo
Standing taller than Olympus,
But also for the silhouette –
Of a wall swathed in the protests
Of the poor.
He pauses for an eternity,
Then, as his father had taught him
Amidst cries of anguish from an unborn child,
He adjusts his hat,
Stepping into the light,
And continuing on,
As if nothing had
Happened.