New York City, Please Be Kind. I’ve Got a Fragile Heart and an Open Mind.

Drawing by Stephen Altshire

I think about that seven-year old girl

with barrettes in her hair and wind on her cheeks

and at times I wonder

What must she think of me?

Like Carrie Bradshaw, maybe?

But, hold the sex. I’ll take the city.

New York,

please have mercy.

I wore my blue suede shoes

to a club to dance away my rhythm and blues

along the way, I bumped into Langston Hughes.

He’s got fingerprints all over Harlem

what would he think of the city’s problem,

with growing and changing

and neighborhoods rearranging?

Would he approve like Carnegie,

to see he left a legacy

that in twenty years may be gone,

whilst all this chaos and confusion goes on?

But we still hum their swan songs

And I may not be seven anymore,

but New York still has excitement galore

I’ll sit back and wonder what the next eleven years have in store.