Poem – Goodnight Sweet City Goodnight (By Mike Matter)

Goodnight Sweet City Goodnight
by Mike Matter

Goodnight sweet city, goodnight

Hold your evening close by and ready the mid-morning-missed realization of sunrise

Fly your noise through the heights of the rich and poor alike then scatter your ash over the higher

A dream lies filled with visions of height and glory seasoned with an agonizing challenge, joy, grandiose and grief

Rip apart the hearts of the unfortunate with stories of bullets over the boroughs and wake the suburbans that fight for what they call family and falsify the grime into marketable grit that makes realtors grin with euphoria.

Shackle the limits of the mind in mayhem at bars and clubs until the street overflows with the wonderfully twisted and drug infest our youth slowly alongside the hopeless has beens and never was-ers.

Pry off the shiny sunlight in your grandly colored polluted sunsets

and show your darkness in all its glorious dimension

From overpriced-rich-rooftop bars to the steamy warm spots on the sidewalk in front of the salvation army where the mainliner finds a home just atop the subway roofs and to the left of the suburbs

Cry your sorrows of good from a long day of work greed and toil that worked hand in hand with the honest, good minded nobles of working classers, label makers and classifiers

Set forth your cover for crimes and romance

and rest the blazing ozone that slowly roasts the planet and underserved shadows

Point your gaze toward the coming of the morning and worship

for all your glory can hold

never boast higher its entry and step into your own

while you turn your darkened head back and glare at the wonder only your cover can create

we take your hatred and joy, pride, prowl and prowess as our hands reach upward

and give solemnity to your constancy and magnitude, goodnight