We created our own beach and perfect sunset
A place to sit with our feet at the waters edge
We took a billion grains of sand and separated them by colour
We took all the gray ones and pushed them together.
This made the sidewalks of our beach.
We took the sea shells we would find beneath our feet
And stretch them to the heavens up and down our street
The buildings on our beach are awe-inspiring.
And we would take the tide from the sea, ebbing and flowing
And fill in the spaces to keep this beauty coming and going
Because our tide is the infrastructure of our beach.
You see MY beach is a concrete jungle.
My perfect sunset is looking down 6th Ave under moonlight.
I sit and rest within the pulsating heartbeat of this city.
Every throb spurring and fawning energy back into her patrons.
And we are all patrons of this urban mistress.
She is the great allure of the expansive unknown
And the warm embrace of the comfortably familiar.
She is my love.
She holds many lovers and she accommodates us all.
We are all intertwined and represent one regret she, will never, conceive.
It’s a polygamous love, sharing a common heartbeat, and a community.
The selfish desire to claim her as our own
And the understanding to know
That we are all her breath,
And she inhales with every smile,
Every tear,
Every gasp,
Every fear,
Every stare
Every picture taken
Every moment that we think we hold close and private, keeps her alive.
We live in this city, and in turn, she lives in us.
In each and every infinitesimal interaction between location and emotion,
Between each rain drop that falls and each and every person that calls her home.
Jungle-life is poetry.
We don’t swing from vines
Instead we steady ourselves with the iron bars of the subway.
We don’t exist amidst wild-life and trees
We, the people, are the wild animals we all see
And our skyscrapers are our everyday shrubbery.
She tends to her garden with majesty and care
And reminds us that life within her bosom is for us all to share.
Her love isn’t one made for all to bear
It takes a certain person to only breathe her air.
I’ve learned that the place makes the person
But the people define the location.
And don’t be confused, we appreciate taking an “Island vacation’
Departing from a front-yard and white picket fence.
But, here, where I feel most at home, surrounded by friends,
My beach never sleeps,
And my sunset never ends.
Wax Poetic 