My Metropolis

This city doesn't care,

If you hate its subways,

If you disentangle,

Your mangled spine.

This city doesn't care,

If it's spidering highways,

Sound like the ocean,

Or the hot rush of blood.

Blood pressure and divorce,

The crude oil that,

Keeps its windpipe tightening,

Psychosis going.

This city doesn't care,

If you work from home on Fridays,

Your soul is the goblet,

It drinks the moon through.

This city doesn't care,

What you see on the bathroom scales,

Its scales are the sharpened barbs,

Of pigeon spikes and car park brutalism.

It will staple your face,

To its scribbled walls,

As a warning to those,

Who have just arrived.

This city doesn't care,

If you lucked out on crypto,

Just because you're good with numbers,

Doesn't mean you should be alive.

This city doesn't care,

If you're suddenly into gardening,

Its toxic smog will strangle,

Any sapling you bear.

Its radio waves will feast, 

On your supple grey matter,

Its car alarms snarling,

In the shuddering midnight.

This city doesn't care,

If you microchip your cats,

In fact, it finds peace,

In the wildlife carnage.

This city doesn't care,

If you're starting to get a head cold,

It would prefer you had cancer,

But it will bide its time.

This city doesn't care,

If you're looking for a sea change,

It will drag you back, tearful,

Like a kinked and twisted hose.

You may see yourself,

As a blonde and naked angel,

But the city sees your body,

As sausage meat and collagen glue.

This city wants you shivering,

In your waterside apartment,

Replying to your final work email,

In the hopeless glow of morning.

This city wants you cold,

On a stainless-steel slab,

Or at least on a park bench,

Howling in the rain.

Its face is,

A straitjacket.

Its heart is,

Hard rubbish.

It's fingertips,

Used cigarettes,

It's tongue 

That scraping sound,

At the back,

Of your skull. 

Writer: Matthew Phillips

Editor: Teagan Marsh