CITY OF LIGHT

I love this city,

And I have been a part of others.

I have been an affiliate of more successful corporations,

Some teeming urban jungles

Some merely hushed down townships.

I have been a part of the blood that fuels them,

But none have ever added structure to my veins

The way my city does.

My home, my pulse.

This is where my own story has been paced into the pavements,

With my own history bleeding into its concrete cracks.

This city is as much a part of me as my own heart is.

I inhale a mouthful of thick city air

And I cough it back into day,

Where the light bounces off streets filled with metal blood cells,

While the people inside like platelets,

Beep their horns and curse their neighbours.

But still I love this city.

I tip toe through the remnants of the nights’ revelries,

And the bric-a-brac of the forgotten people

Living in the shadows of buildings

That house the more successful.

I negotiate my way through the bump and grind of the mean streets.

The screeching of gulls circling in wait

To pick the bones of someone’s discarded lunch,

Filling the air,

While the wailing of some poor soul

Whose bones are being picked apart

By their own scavengers,

Joins the gull’s savage song 

In a choral fugue, that's carried on the breeze.

But still I love this city.

I love the pulse, and the reverberation.

The rhythm and throb of it.

The warmth and humour.

I love the soul of this city,

The kindness,

The heat of the city lights.

The calm temperament of a people

Who have seen more hardship than most

But would still offer up their last morsel as an act of charity.

I love the fire in the blood of the Irish

And the ferocity of spirit

Contained within this city,

I am smitten by its people 

Who burn with intelligence and wit,

And are fortified by valor and a toughness of spirit. 

There is a palpable tenderness

In the air of this city,

Despite a natural cynicism

And a lean toward begrudgery. 

So I do love this city,

With its bad weather and its bad moods.

With its resilience and its beauty.

With its long and bloody history

And its glistening future. 

Because this is my city, 

And it is where I belong.