The City

Bells clamor somewhere within the city,

their deep tones bouncing off the painted stone walls like

delirious beetles.

A tired art renovator holds the cigarette like a

paintbrush, the drooping ashes

reflected in his greying eyes.

He lets the smoke from his lungs trickle out to fill the ambience of the

orange-painted restaurant

and sighs as his change jingles in the waiter’s wicker basket.

He laments a hatred for coins and leaves

too large of a tip.

A yellow haze clings to the city,

sinking low like sweet  honey within the straight-walled streets and

dripping from the fizzing glow within twisted iron lamps

suspended above uneven cobblestones.

He ambles on through the slowly pooling golden cloud,

his shadow stretching and racing circles around his feet.

Why is it

these streets wind

like feathered serpents over the hills?

And the

squarish houses tumble over one another like

so many ill-placed tetris blocks?

These labyrinthine corridors can test a man’s endurance

in unraveling spools of string trailing the path behind

the path all the way to the beginning.

So often do they cross now and overlap…

I’m certain I have not the time to

unravel the entire knot and so…

He walks.

A poet prophesies in a foreign tongue at the rim of the fountain

and laments a crude language.

Somewhere overhead a sliver of a sluggish moon receives a prayer.

He runs a thinning hand through thinning hair and

throws open the windows.

I want to sleep to the

sound of the city

tonight.