Wednesday, May 16, 2012

MANHATTAN

 

I walk the streets of the city like a

traveler from the distant stars

noting every nuance of the human thirst for

survival, for pleasure, for reverence,

for glory and for meaning. 

 

Humans seem to be beleaguered by the

complexity of the inner life,

the images of self and others and the

summation of the infinitely diverse interpretations of the

singular events and circumstances of a lifetime.  

             

There are many nomads in the city,

many homeless,

many hanging precariously to life. 

 

There are many young vital males with

nothing to do but endure the

relentless passing of time 

while the vitality roars in their bodies.

 

These men decay from within from the

ravages of the restless engine of inertia, 

the parks, the christian missions and

ultimately the prisons await them.

 

There are many who walk the city

inescapably mad tormented by the fire

burning constantly in their brains. 

 

There are many who walk the streets with a

running dialogue being carried on by the

myriad personalities trapped within a

singular consciousness

particularly prone to perilous ends,

completely devoid of the least remnant of

survival programming, so engrossed are they

with their own divinations.

 

 


Uptown women at the very pinnacle of fashion,

hailing cabs in a driving rain, 

junkies nodding out over a cup of coffee at bickford's, 

lunch time employees causing

ten thousand hot dogs to disappear from a

nedick's restaurant in less than an hour,

a drunk pissing on a statue opposite macy's.

 

Five young black boys

demolishing a burnt out tenement with

consummate speed and skill,

young gay men cruising with an

almost mocking grace on a

hot summer afternoon in central park, 

a family speaking french on a bus

nearing lincoln center, 

old italian men in white playing bocce.

 

A gaggle of widowed women

lined up on park benches

like chickens roosting on an old fallen log

exchanging stories regarding their dead husbands

and inconsiderate children,

or comparing the severity of their operations, 

queues of young professionals outside the

broadway theaters on a saturday night. 

The ghost like quality of Wall Street on a

sunday afternoon with the wind blowing the

refuge through silent thoroughfares,

the sharply delineated gray of winter with

low clouds enshrouding the great skyscrapers,

thousands upon thousands of workers emptying out of their cubicles onto fifth avenue.

 

These are some of the images that

envelop my senses and

catapult me into the

ever changing fabric of the human kind

infinitely diverse yet

somehow monolithic,

ever moving yet changeless,

an immense population that

shares a commonality of their genes,

the architecture of their brains

and the form of their bodies. 

 

Humans are the chimera of a protracted past,

an instantaneous present and

an uncertain future. 

 

The city stands as a

crystalline mirror to that humanity

revealing all its convoluted facets,

its monumental incoherence and

shimmering vitality.

 

My own growing up with all its

particular circumstances is but an

indelicate mirror of the state and situation of humanity. 

 

I am, in fact, a living time machine

carrying with me through the fourth dimension

the history and possibilities of the race.