The lights fascinate them like there is no tomorrow-
Perhaps it is because
For them,
There isn't.
New York vacations drop like the New Year's Ball,
Exciting new beginnings,
In the summer, the fall, the spring-
Perhaps that is why
Winter
Is my favorite season.
Tourists wear their clothes like proclamations,
Inspired by the neon pinks, blues, whites, yellows of Times Square-
Perhaps that explains
Why New Yorkers
Only where black.
In the city that never sleeps,
We stalk like shadows in the night,
Slinking our way to work as they shimmy their ways across disco floors
Desperate to make the most of their spare taste of city life.
Their tongues loll like thirsted dogs,
Begging for a sip-
We know not to drink from city fountains,
Because New York is always in with the new,
But poison never gets old.
Have these blaring lights blinded me,
Or torn open my eyes?
I am proud of my city,
But I am also friends with the men in the alleyways
And the women on the streets
And they have told me that New York talks shit about them behind their backs
So what am I to do
But look at my city without betrayal?
"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere," they chime,
But the only thing they have to make is their flight back home.
They will not stay for the Winter
When the cries of the hungry fill the streets
And the sirens of ambulances
Are the only thing
That warms the air.
If I tell someone I am from New York,
They try to tell it back to me-
"Like, real-real New York,
Like, the city-city New York,
Like, Manhattan-Macy's-Times Square-Central Park-Trump Tower-Fifth Avenue-Empire State Building-China Town-Little Italy New York?"
As if they doubt people live there
For more than just the weekend.
Yes, I am from New York,
And I have lived there for 1,785 weekends,
And I have lived there for 30,345 days,
And I have walked the streets you only take taxis down
And I have shaken hands with the people you wince away from when they come too close,
And I have seen those blaring lights every day on the way to school
And I have seen people throw themselves into the Hudson river
Because they dared to make a holiday into a lifestyle
Only to find they couldn't meet the rent on their life.
The lights fascinate them like there is no tomorrow-
Perhaps it is because
For them,
There isn't.
Yet for the 8.5 million of us who will pick up their litter Monday morning,
After their souvenir-stocked suitcases stuff their planes
And the air thereafter,
We will suck up our sorrow when it begins to lap at our heels,
Look to the Freedom Tower and sigh,
"Well,
At least there is always tomorrow."
