Concrete

The city above us reaches higher and higher tipped at the top in all its glory with iconic, prickly, spires, as long as air rights permit it. Build, tear down, rebuild, as the wheels below spin round in sync with the people who dream, and the unbridled greed. Sidewalks, though, remain the same, i.e., concrete -people come here to compete, and they prefer the ground static, unforgiving and mundane -the cracks house stunted plants, squat down low, you might see ants- too. People are ants when you are on the 100th floor, and disappear if you go high enough, or if you forget them. Back on the ground you might notice concrete, light grey, doesn’t hide dirt well, but people barely care -would you continually step on a light-colored shirt? and furthermore, is a visual foil to a galaxy of flattened gum wads, jet black- gum wads that remind me of opaque black holes up above the sky. There are innumerable pebbles too, studding the walkways largely unaccounted for by the naked eye. We grid our concrete like we grid the city -the geometric dividing lines are narrow spaces like mini streets -if we are Godzillas, then OCD Godzillas avoid these streets, but if trying to catch a bus, that all goes out the window. Concrete’s biggest foe may be jackhammers -shuddering in their presence, succumbing to brute, deafening force -a staccato berating beat, like an amplified version of the concrete pounding of feet, of people and pets, or an even more amplified version of the gentle tapping of grounded pigeons.