In Any, Every Case

https://youtu.be/Z3QUVmLO2Ec

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The city wants my nitrogen to hum, have fun in me,

so that the seeping mulch I am will make a lot of it.

Wonderful to feel and hear my guts so cunningly

produce the gas the city wants so it can plot with it

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to fuss with – entertain itself. Not that what it does

with it is anything I know. It seems to like what

I am doing, though. I feel the city’s soothing buzz

inside: as if confiding, “You’re an And now, not a But.”

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I’m a tiny essence in New York’s identity: it needs me

in however minuscule a way to keep some portion

of it in repair. Manhattan feeds and breeds me

so my hydrogen and methane can without distortion

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help to gain, sustain the city’s equanimity. What better

destiny could I embrace? That any atom of me fits

in place in this great city’s plan! The spirit and the letter

of why I have any purpose here at all reside in its

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decision to engage me as its slave, which honor gladly

I now savor. And if I leave this mortal coil in disgrace?

Won’t matter. I’ll do, though life go well or badly,

what I’m here to do: emit my CO2 in any, every case.

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