How Cities Talk: Poems

 How Cities Talk

A collection of poems written by Morgan Austin

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An unsayable

ipseity of living

condemns all of us.

---

You’re acting on a stage of the film,

a unifying perspective (a screen)

so toxically framed in your mind.

It fractals into an unquiet grass

where it decays into a

mass of shaken ‘hey’-s

and (passed) past[s].

It’s a lie that snowballs

into a fear of regret

from a leaf of protection.

It’s all around us, where we’re 

watched stalked by the Other– 

(another of me)

who (so simply) 

kills us with every gaze.

The wick keeps burning, the film rolling.

You start to feel an itch (the itch!);

your thought is you,

and it’s why you can’t stop

thinking. 

Your nausea-– the emptiness grows larger.

Time starts waving.

The orchestral rise and flare,

a crescendo of emotions, all leading up to this!

and… 

Unreachable.

A mathematical limit.

Both A & ~A

---

The heavy set suns

beating cold, snow-covered seats.

Lost clothes lie awake.

---

I am the sweat bursting through skin–

the cold within a summer heat.

The breath within a shudder,

the shiver closing the nerves in your spine.

I am the city.

I am the trash you litter;

I am the whisper through you.

The cracks in the street,

the rain leaking through.

I am restlessness;

The ‘beneath-you’ every day.

The pit in your stomach that grows

bigger with every revolution– your fears are my own (birthed from me;

loved

by me).

I need you, and I am you. I am less than nothing.

I tremble alone; I tremble inside.

---

I follow the cold–

I am twenty years from now.

I’m the harsh wind’s ash.

---

A dozen birds stretched across a wire a mile long.

Slowly, a bus

creeks,

hisses,

and halts.

A ruckus of participation, a flash of

inspiration!

Little kiddies tossing

a faux pig skin

on a warm

summer’s day.

A deep hum sets in…

Unnoticed

by an elderly woman

cashing checks

and

checking cash on

a trip

to a grocery store.

Unnoticed

by a pond blooming

  with

toads, lilies, and baby

  koi;

living in a world bigger

than they could

ever imagine.

A deep hum…

…broken by a siren off to help

that same old lady

who’s heart beat

one last time.

Slowly, the hum

fades,

breaks,

and

secedes

to a pair of whistles— 

–a coach

Regulating a foul,

keeping peace among

teams of kids

too rough to play fair.

–The sinister division of air molecules,

A bomb’s dive:

potential,

kinetic,

Gravitational

energy: pulling itself towards the city, (a bug bite for the earth) an eternal blanket for a community.

Suddenly,

A horror of machinations, a flash of 

incineration!

A million lives burned (and buried)

for the signature of a man.

A signature worth

the cold silhouettes

Haunting the sidewalks

for centuries to come.