The cold concrete writhes beneath their soles,
Whispering, screaming,
The echoes of a million other footsteps, journeys.
It hums, the gears of a working machine.
Metal, glass, brick, cement twist and churn.
I walk the lattice-grid streets,
Past paths visible only to me as black-paint shoe prints.
I lose my own among them.
This beast is both cage and cradle, shelter and shipwreck.
It sings to me its noxious-sweet siren song
And I am lost.
Adrift.
The gears grind.
I see my past and future in this place,
Reflected in the glass.
Places I have been, have yet to go,
Scatter the board.
I stop.
The gears grind.
I breathe.
Sweet poison.
I cannot find myself.
I am no longer lost.
I am no one,
No one in the flow and flux.
More blood in cold, steel veins.
Cables above and below,
A web of lives.
The echoes of a million other journeys hum to me
The city’s song.
Whispering, screaming,
The echoes of a million other footsteps, journeys.
It hums, the gears of a working machine.
Metal, glass, brick, cement twist and churn.
I walk the lattice-grid streets,
Past paths visible only to me as black-paint shoe prints.
I lose my own among them.
This beast is both cage and cradle, shelter and shipwreck.
It sings to me its noxious-sweet siren song
And I am lost.
Adrift.
The gears grind.
I see my past and future in this place,
Reflected in the glass.
Places I have been, have yet to go,
Scatter the board.
I stop.
The gears grind.
I breathe.
Sweet poison.
I cannot find myself.
I am no longer lost.
I am no one,
No one in the flow and flux.
More blood in cold, steel veins.
Cables above and below,
A web of lives.
The echoes of a million other journeys hum to me
The city’s song.