New York: Concurrently Schizophrenic.

Whenever I travel to USA, wherever I might be, I try to come back through New York. It is a magnet to my senses. I could stand for hours in its art galleries, but also days on its streets. Sometimes as an onlooker, sometimes as a part of its unending swirl. The city's smoke and movement, it's glittering heights and its grimy innards, its populace with purpose, the hopelessness of its hobos. Its glass, its ostentation, its purpose, its hope, its possibilities. The way the city assimilates me into its poetry, the way its hardness empties me and its art fills me, New York is a sensory overload.

 

And it changes hues, borough to borough, bridge to bridge, suburb to suburb. And as I travel, I am filled with the confusion of the person who wants to pin down a city into a pithy phrase. For within this one city lie a hundred possible faces. The arty, the grimy, the soaring, the sparing, the vulgar, the simple. And the definitions come as a smorgasbord of meanings and possibilities. The way we are, the way all of us are - never one, always multidimensional, always a contributor, always a purveyor. Often a victim, often a voyeur, often a little bright, ever so often unmitigatingly sad. New York, concurrently schizophrenic, indeed.

 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems with a city as it backdrop -

• Calcutta - a Lover's Epitaph
• Searching for Coffee in Jaipur
• Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh

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Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com

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The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -

Nu Jazz Lounge Vol 2 (Mondtanz Edit) by Sascha Ende®
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/141-nu-jazz-lounge-vol-2-mondtanz-edit-
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license