these city streets

I vainly wait for Godot in the alleys of east and west.  I walk these streets of SoHo past the vibrant and the bleak.  I stop without reflection and step without direction, I wander to where sound and fury meets.  The world it moves so swiftly.  The traffic knows no regret. The sun reveals and the clouds forget, all is bound by beauty and nothing seems to move me like the poetry of movement, the waltz of time and space, the sunlight’s rays fall like gilded drops of ecstasy upon my face.  I lie beneath the crowds as they gather in their masses, and pass without expression, their faces like empty glasses, I gaze upon the fire and the ashes, and though tragic it may be.  I still believe, in spite of doubt, my heart will not concede.  To the cynics and the faithless, to the bigots and their hatred, my heart is bold beyond my own belief.  The wind it blows in cyclones, the times and daily dance.  The sewer overflows with putrid perfume, the sacred scent of this god forsaken land.  The traffic lights possess me; the wretched confess to me their secret sins of decadence.  I dance in my own contentment, as the crowds move in masses, like a swarm of fish that passes, through castles made of sand.  The city is where the lion lies beside the lamb.  Where the angels sing and the demons dance.  It is the landscape of the wicked, the kingdom of the damned, where the wealthy walks beside the pauper, the ungodly makes their offers, and the fatherless make their stand.  The beauty excites wonder and the subways that run under, a labyrinth beneath my feet.  Oh to feel the song of every dream that has withered like a fragile rose, suffocated by the concrete and cold steel.  I hail a taxi; as I depart I feel as though I’m near, somewhere closer to where I’m going, and yet much further it appears.