John Grey, writing on community.

City Folk, Arts Division
By John Grey

So here we are, myself and more than
two million of my brethren.
We live in cities.
We answer to roads and traffic,
stores and high-rises,
the constant crush with others like ourselves.

I breathe in brick and glass and steel
before I even get to oxygen.
I look out the window.
Everything is looking in
but with such sublime indifference.

Crime and sewers,
mass transit and mass lives …
garbage trucks in the early morning …
where do they put all this stuff.
The city is a landfill waiting to happen.

Luckily, there’s always a coffee house
at the artsy edge of town
where you can crowd around a table
with others of your ilk,
shoot the Boho breeze
about trying to make a decent living
in the soulless city jungle.

So here we are, myself and maybe
fifteen of my brethren.
We live in cities
just so we can say,
“You call this living.”