Glass and Steel

This glass and steel,
glint and shine,
of ingenuity and labour built--
but the purpose?

Less transparent, it seems,
nothing but a lie
with its sheen in midday sun,
blinding the world in its glory:
feminist's phallocentrism,
I wonder enveloped at Bryant Park.

That myth of an American Dream,
I cannot help but think,
standing upright as Masses
pass me by,
the only other potent image
me under Old Glory, eyes fixed
on its tattered body being whipped
unapologetically by gusts.
Still staring I cannot but wonder:
why is it so?

No, not the fact of the myth.
For me, that is all too clear,
remembering the body left
for dead on Wyoming fence,
haunting melody of Wainwright:
scarecrow, scarecrow,
stark lyrics mimicking stark
reality, no need to dress up erasure.

It seems so far in the past,
and yet so close,
fresh wounds of my own.
Just yesterday:
changed form, same message,
vitriol repackaged, as words--
laundry list of slurs
lacking cessation of breath,
but no less painful:

My own leaden tears sitting
in bed, nursing a perpetually
wounded soul, at twelve
bud already tempered by mighty frost,
new consciousness in
the wake of disconnect.

Reminded of its permanence,
I repeat the fact of myth.
Too well I know I cannot have
what others can have at a basic level,
written in law, laced in social expectation:

I am more than this, I tell myself.
Yes, I am and yet...
I am bound to this consciousness,
sexual partner inseparable from
treatment of the act.
Both blessing and curse
it cannot be undone,
unlike vision it
never loses clarity.

So why do I have to live this?
I pause for a moment, making sense
of jumbled thought as I am
greeted by something more solemn:
Why do so many endure this?
I plumb the depths of my mind
before the final question emerges
from the brambles:
why do so many miss Old Glory in tatters?

There are answers to these questions,
somewhere in this body of mine
they reside,
but looking up at skyscrapers
around Bryant Park,
they don't need to spoken.

The glory in the glint,
the wonder of the steel,
the job, the money,
promised through adorned facades:
renunciation of hope
never a thought
in light of the Dream of
quiet consciousness.

Even through deconstruction,
Dream spurious to me,
I am momentarily enraptured.
For just a second, still staring up,
wounded soul is mended,
Old Glory suddenly replaced
by giant LED version.

The sight forces me to
grab my stomach,
sudden sharp pain,
falling to the ground as my mind
seeks to slip out of consciousness
temporarily.

Even in the most potent
disavowals of the material,
the last thing I see before
waking up to an unfamiliar face
is glass and steel.
Unable to speak, heavy thoughts
are a deluge in my head:
we are doomed, we are doomed
by this glass and steel,

And all falls silent.