I sat in the silence of a
Room eight times larger than I know
And I absorbed the six hundred
Empty chairs.

And I wrapped myself in
Miles of white fabric
And learned the feeling of
Sitting on an escalator.

The clean lines and plate-glass sunshine
Of Hermes's aqueduct
A secret passage everyone knows
You cannot fade into floral carpet.

It is a jaunty expression
To consume a length of sub sandwich
While strolling down an ally
Aware you may get mugged.

And over the years I have begun
To believe that teenage girls
Should not have camera phones
With their sneaky minds.

Somewhere along the line I learned
How to think, that silence
Is a virtue and precisely the best
Way to be alone.

I will never forget
The chandeliers of
Trapped Christmas lights
Painted in a warm glow.

Hook your arm in mine to
Stroll upon this concrete
And we will share this half
Gallon of lukewarm milk.

Cracked sidewalks
Hopeful puddles
And the downtown umbrellas
Racing with the cars
In the rain of
Toasty libraries
You sat on the floor like always.

Downtown coffee shops
Roasted from the finest and most
Impertinent beans
Never forget the
Kind of damp days we
Spent together.

Sweeter now the cherries
Taste than before you
And somehow they'll always
Remind me of you
But life, our
Unforgotten years
Can always remember to
Keep you and yours alive, in our hearts, don't
Say goodbye.

There are
Cities
In me.

A small town girl full of
Cities.

The only time I am ever
Alone
Is when the oceans of
People
Surround me
Concrete walls and window tiles
Every face dissolves
Into every other, just
Blur the skylines
A little more.

I always feel the restless
Energy, but only when
The ceaseless floods of
Mankind wash me over.

There are
Cities
In me.

Every block, every brick
Every beam and every balcony
Every inch of this
World in me.

There are
Cities
In me.

But I saw once face
In all the seas of shifting life
And suddenly the smoke-rimmed sky
Parted ways for you.

On the escalator mountaintop
Friday evening at seven
One face, one name
Made its way through
The tiled maze, and then
Astoundingly
I woke up from my
Metropolis dreams.

In one split
Second, the thousands of
Souls, all shoved
Together, swayed
To reveal
Just two souls, spotlighted
You
And me.

There are cities
In me
But never
Can anyone
But you
Light up the roving night.

It's the big cities that fascinate me
But then ruins are the sights to see
The dark lit corners
With broken shards of mourners
Loud car horns
Who bite at your feet with thorns
Bursting with their party voices
Made of rich history and choices
Small talk on the engines
Stories poking you like pins
Of running traffic lights
With power at the peak of heights
Something like a aurora borealis
They speak of this
A city of lights and wonders
Shaking from the roar of thunder
Twinkling like stars on the ground
The whispers can be heard from the ashes that lay around.

You could have reached here Wednesday by last choice
Perhaps your mood shifted. All the calm nights
you had now lay awake. You explore the city
built by the perfect people, white cathedral
stands upright on a slant, a compass buried in plain sight,
the gibberish of art students from painting lullabies as sirens.
Only children are asleep. The university
grows younger each year. The best teacher
is always late, not realizing her impact.

The person I’m most comfortable with
stays in bed. Security found indoors
the couch allures, security in the capsule,
The deafening whispers, the genuine friends
who live nearby and can’t talk straight. The blessed temple
building worshiped by advertising majors.

The lucid potential, morning sprints round the track,
a library sustained by crushed Adderall —
glowering orbs rotating back counter clockwise,
out of chimneys the black spirits climb,
detectives bicycling, the honor students rummaging
for class notes in the deep end of the dumpster.

So this is college? That frontier plateauing
before you can dive off a cloud? So this utopia
was a dollhouse, the daily on the doormat
camps in the hallway: waits while the child watches
a sit-com?
Don’t apartments stand still? Are abstract paintings
and basketball supposed to nurture a city,
not only Richmond, but also other lonely cities
of misunderstood brunettes, dank **** and dubstep
the weekend will seldom put out
until the city you moved to shuts its eye?

Just tell yourself, “live.” The best teacher, eighteen
when she moved to the university, still grins
even as she coughs out fiberglass. Any day now,
she sings, I’ll take a drive and leave this place.
I pull her close and say. You haven’t slept in your own bed.
The boy who you’ve always loved still thinks about you.
The books you read before breakfast,
whoever the author may be, inspires
and your least favorite student who raises her hand
is judged but her posture never falters.

London, I turn to your fearless  face. A face that remembers fires and plagues. Blazing flames that I now wrap around myself to keep warm. As I walk, hand in hand with the river. I  taste the smoke of my cigarette, blown back into my face. I hold onto your size, your shape moulding into my soul. I take all of you into the cracks of my skin. Streets buzzing like an open wire. A cackle of noise that blurs into the background yet remains coloured. In your neon bright arms, I have built myself a home.

it's not the bustling city
with its massive modernity
and ever present life.
it's not the mountains
with their wild, untamed nature
and their way of making towns look small.
but something stands to be said
for the way the highways curve
into a mall complex
designed to look pleasing,
And for the way millions of cars
and parents and children
manage to fit together like a puzzle
so one can drop her youngest off
run errands with her eldest
and be home in time for her favorite evening programs.

Living in a Concrete Jungle
Watching everyone's lives they Juggle
I've always wanted to Pop their Bubbles
But then Again they All might Stumble

guess what? there’s so many people out there who are way better than you in so many different ways and that’s alright because there’s also hundreds of cities with thousands of people you’ve never met who would be madly in love with you for being exactly as you are today and if that doesn’t excite the **** out of you I’m not sure what will

The ogre that I am, I sit in my man-cave.
It’s bathed in light from my TV and laptop.
Each is a portal to our ugly world.
Regulated crystal-city skyscrapers
Form Giant’s Causeways.
Aircraft eagle overhead
Reminding me of vultures
And 9\11.

Cars beetling about the suburbs,
Some Beetles, Ha Ha.
River highways cascading cars.
Ants rush everywhere,
A seething nest.

So many an ant,
Holding a conch to the ear,
Or staring mesmerised at that tiny screen.
Yoda fingers his phone…

And me I sit here,
Metamorphosing metaphors
For a while
Before I visit Facebook Land
Once again.

Paul Butters