Heartplace: New York | Teen Ink

Heartplace: New York MAG

April 6, 2017
By chsongbird GOLD, Arlington, Massachusetts
chsongbird GOLD, Arlington, Massachusetts
18 articles 0 photos 10 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything"


I ascend from the steps at quarter-to-four,
A black book of music secure in my hands,
To a screeching display of a different score:
A jumble of streetcars and roasted-food stands.
I purchase my dinner and stroll up the street
Toward the place where my fears and my promises meet.
Here humans never sleep, but dream
Of lives fantastic, manic; Wild
As headlights blaring in high beam
And laughing, brazen, like a child:
Drinking the blood of the polluted night,
Creatures of blackness that fades into light.
Sometimes at twilight they tremble with pain,
Manholes steam white from their-black abyss;
Cataracts in this eye of the hurricane,
Blockage diffusing the relative bliss.
A City of Dangers, my father once said,
Ready to pour heartache into your head.
I am but a dust speck, duffel slung low,
My shoes soft and shapely against my back,
In this compound of molecules; row after row
Of iron and steel surging track after track –
And clamoring voices, a bleak monologue
Of dauntless skyscrapers that melt into fog.
Each moment I pass here is slowly unbound;
A kaleidoscope couldn’t blend it more well,
My body sings color and blushes with sound,
A stirring inside that no counsel could quell.
Then the lanes flush with people, briefcases a-flurry,
They sweep me up in their passionate hurry.
I walk the glittering streets at noon,
Silver and wet from a midnight rain;
The bus will be sailing me homeward soon,
But somehow I know that I’ll be back again:
To this city of strangers, this city of change,
To this part of my heart I cannot disarrange.



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This article has 2 comments.


on Apr. 10 2017 at 6:15 pm
chsongbird GOLD, Arlington, Massachusetts
18 articles 0 photos 10 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything"

@HereSheIs Thank you!!! :)

on Apr. 8 2017 at 12:23 pm
HereSheIs BRONZE, Wellesley, Massachusetts
3 articles 0 photos 187 comments

Favorite Quote:
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." -Plato

Amazing rhymes, imagery, and exhilarating description of NY !