Rapacious hands give
Covetous demands, cities
Built on genocide

When someone dies their thoughts
Die with them,
Their bones absorb their words-
After a summer others cease to remember,
We fade and then are gone.


Each person is replaced:
Vast cities shrink becoming grass-beaten mounds,
Shining cultures wither,
Their intricate palaces shatter,
Temples decay under interminable suns,
Religions flounder, sacrificed to time.

Philosophies expire like sunlight
When night falls, wise words unravel,
Tortured by inconsequence,
Decay dripping from each syllable
Like uncollected wind-driven *******
Running down a lonely street.

In the alley the dog howls,
Amongst the discarded boxes the
Raven sings.

i've never been one to have the desire to always live in a small town
to know the story of everyone
and to have the map of the town tattooed to my palm
i've always liked the idea of unknowing
to not always know what's two streets away
to not know everyone in the city
and i've always enjoyed the beauty of it all
in a small town you will run out of views and sights eventually
but in a city, they are infinite
when its constantly changing you can see everything newly
new lights, new faces, new buildings, new streets
change to some can be intimidating
but change to me is something of beauty
and to prefer that over similarity is not wrong of me

I've always had the urge to live somewhere bigger than me
something larger than life i suppose
and It's the night that has shown me this
Once the streetlights turned on and we roamed the streets
I fell in love
Small towns only hard stars and similar roads
The cities held more to me
Was it wrong to fall in love with streetlights?

I was in the old sector of a city
one day
and I thought
of this boy
whom I might've
            liked
                to love
                      in another life.
I remember he told me
one day
he'd want to live
in the old part
of a big city.

I asked him why,
and in all honesty,
            I wouldn't be able to tell you his answer.
Walking through that neighborhood,
I think
I might've known why.

Modern cities
are full of culture
and people
and noise,
but the historic districts-
the original apartments
and bricks
and stones-
they have souls
and thousands
of memories.
Those buildings have witnessed
        history
in the making.

It might be in the way
The buildings seem
to smile at each other
Or the way
The street lamps flicker
Hello
As you walk by.

Maybe it talks
To the small town
just south of the border
By way of the people
who come
and go.

Perhaps the spirit
Of a city
Flows through the power lines;
The grids of fire and lightning.
Maybe the lights are akin to life.

Maybe the city's mind-
Its complex, high-functioning brain
Lies underground.
Its neurons are the subways
Moving the people like so many thoughts.

Maybe the soul of a city lies
Within the people who dwell there.
The new ones that add to it
The ones who are just
Swallowed whole

Into the abyss
Of lights and life and love.