The City and the City

No apologies china (awesome British fantasy author for those who don't know one of his prized novels has the same title as this blog post and poem) this was an awesome title for a book. Apologies in advance though because this poem although tying on the themes of that book ie such as the identity of a city and the ill sense of that elusive quality that makes one part of a city and not part. Readers all I can say is check the book out its about two overlapping cities: the integrity of each is preserved by laws refusing the citizens of each respective city from inadvertently entering or peering into the neighboring city.

But I digress this poem is about me and my life. There is no hiding how obvious it is, I'm currently living in two cities and the sense of loneliness as displacement is new to me. I think it's something unnatural to anyone if I'm honest. So I wanted to write something about ones identity and how that is tied to where we live but also the connections we have are really what defines home for me.

For your benefit I'm referring to two cities newcastle and sydney Australia. I use the term city interchangeably discussing about both cities as "the city". Anyway readers this is my poem enjoy!!!

The city and the City

The cool propeller air
Breathes on my naked room
It circulates the new dust on
New things which came from
The other city whose name
Still bares the title home

There is a sad cavity of space
Almost two hundred kilometres away
It used to keep my things
The walls are grey inside
This paradise prison

I recall the night of my eighteenth
Birthday when the girl I loved at Thr time and a fried tackled me upon a wall
A wall that I can only reach by car now
I recall the girl with the shaggy hair
Sitting on that bed
She too I can no longer reach

The city hears the sea each morning
And it's breaths are riddled with
The smell of salt and sand
The water calms me somehow
Places mg feet back on the ground
Drags my soul into this place
Atop this lofty tower and it's
Privileged vista

The city is riddled with people
As many as I can bear
At its core it's almost as foreign and alien to me as another country
The people here think things
There minds circulate in five kilometer circles
They move by their feet and now by wheels
We share the same city but theirs is smaller than mine

This city has people in the air
And more in the sea
It's alive in the mornings and not the night
This place somehow is etched into me
My soul is content here to linger
Yet the other city with all it's alien people is more my home still

A house rests in what most in the city
Deem the country
It's keepers are closest to me
They are my city
They are he feeling of the sand on
My wet feet
The are the calming breeze
The smell of salt

Two cities and neither home
I can only exist in one place
Now I exist in two
And those two parts of me
Will never join
We shall wander the same roads
Perhaps it will appear we are the same person
But we are half of what we supposedly are
A soul can only be stretched so far
The flesh is weak
The spirit shall ensure
The torn heart and the fear
The fear of the truth that here in the city I am at last naked and alone
At the mercy of my flesh