Manhattan is a world within a world, hard and avant garde The city never sleeps but dreams abound Pick your carnal pleasures if you possess the sufficient cash It will be found And promptly delivered to your penthouse door

 

Billionaire tycoons step over disheveled bums sleeping on grates For every success glory a thousand tragedies of torment The singer never shedding her waitress apron Or the whore starring on the corner numb on heroin

 

Langston Hughes' revolutionary fervor permeated Harlem Allen Ginsburg hit the beat in his humble midtown abode We poets dare to imagine, we conquer when we surrender Interpreting life confining the infinite in a succinct stanza

 

Bipolar, schizophrenic, nihilistic, radiating a comfortable warmth Neighbors never speaking sharing sparse food in electrical power black outs A candle light dinner of canned tuna and cold pinto beans

 

Manhattan skyline a creation of man mimicking Rocky Mountain grandeur All this on stolen land purchased with trinkets worth 24 dollars If a picture is worth a thousand words a poem inspires a million pictures

 

Dwelling deep is the fantasy, Oz pales, Shangri La fails, truth prevails Humble poets pen the precise perfect word But humble poets, polite and contrite are never heard See the grand word master huddled in a filthy cloak, copper cup extended With a cardboard sign, declaring in a scribbled message divine "I will rhyme for a dime"

The cup is bare as empty as his belly