Cities Rise and Cities Fall

The History

From ancient ideals, a whisper starts to grow,
Of common purpose, where all seeds might sow.
A vision painted, shared and pure and bright,
To banish want and elevate the light.
The climb to the top, a patient, shared ascent,
A collective dream, on brotherhood intent.

Yet history whispers from a blood-soaked page,
Where noble hopes ignite a cruel, dark age.
From Petrograd's zeal to distant, sun-scorched lands,
The people's banner slipped to tyrant's hands.
The promise of equality, a siren's call,
Led not to freedom, but to freedom's fall.

For in the fervor to level every height,
A single will usurps the common right.
The leader rises, fervent, strong, and bold,
While dissent falters, stories left untold.
The planned economy, meant to feed the poor,
Becomes the lock upon a prison's door.

The climb to the top is slow, when built on trust and reason,
Each brick laid gently, through debate's long season.
But when the state assumes all-encompassing sway,
The ride to the bottom is fast, come what may.
From shared endeavor, power swift descends,
And freedom's fragile journey quickly ends,
In iron rule, where "comrade" masks the dread,
And silent masses follow where they're led.

Now, by the rivers, where the towers pierce the sky,
New York stands poised beneath a watchful eye.
Today, New York will choose its fateful way,
Between the shadows and the light of day.
Will lessons learned from empires long since passed,
Remind us future's molded, built to last,
Not on the swift descent of simple might,
But on the slow, hard climb toward truth and light.

 

The Manifesto

The Super-Mayor took the stage,
Igniting lights across the city’s page.
He wore no mask, no armored suit,
Just tailored silk—the political loot.
A man of grandeur, voice so deep,
He woke the New Yorkers from their sleep.

“Tonight, New York,” he roared and shook,
With words he’d cribbed from history’s book,
“We reclaim our destiny! We soar!
We shall not merely buy, but ask for more!
The time for mediocrity has passed!
Let glory be spectacularly cast!”

The destiny he had in mind, they knew,
Was something shiny, nebulous, and new.
It meant the subway would arrive on time,
Without resorting to industrial crime.
It meant the potholes, sharp and vast,
Would fill themselves, reflecting futures past.

He swore the rats would cease their hustle,
And quietly retire from the borough bustle.
His mandate was divinely blessed, he claimed,
To solve the woes that could not be proclaimed:
The pizza slice that folds too well,
The tourists packed within a hotel.

He showed a chart, impossibly complex,
That promised to alleviate all wrecks.
“My plan is simple, swift, and clean:
We shall administer what we have seen!
We’ll pass a bill for Greater Heights,
And authorize a thousand, brand-new lights!”

The crowd erupted, drunk on sound,
For Super-Promises with no solid ground.
He raised a fist, dramatically fine,
And whispered: “The destiny is mine.”
Then flew off quickly, in a rush,
Ignoring all the city's filthy slush.

And so the destiny was claimed by night,
By sheer assertion, powered by stage light.
The morning came, the city groaned and woke,
And found the Super-Mayor’s promise broke.
The R train stalled, the garbage stank,
And destiny remained upon the bank.
(It turns out rats don't care about a speech,
No matter how far destiny can reach.)

The Theory

The siren song of theory, bold and vast,
A future built where shadows quickly past,
It wears no cape, but takes a mythic stand,
A promise held within a waiting hand.

Behold the swiftness of the promised plan,
Outracing measures made by mortal man!
Not lumbering through the slow, financial years,
But flying past the weight of banker’s fears;
Faster than inflation, heat and stress,
It rushes toward its perfect homelessness.

The slow, grey tangle of the civil state,
The endless forms that seal the common fate,
The petty kingdoms clerks have built to rule—
This surging tide disdains the bureaucratic school.
It casts the rigid protocols aside,
In one great surge where single wills reside;
More powerful than bureaucracy could be,
A swift, unfettered, centralized decree.

But most spectacular, the feat sublime,
That breaks the tether to the laws of time,
When careful critics raise their dismal sound,
And facts insist the structure must be bound—
With utter faith in what the eye can see,
It breaks the bonds of mere causality.
It scorns the friction where the figures fall,
Able to leap logic in a single bound!

A flash of scarlet, lightning-quick and proud,
It moves beyond the limits of the crowd.
A sudden journey to the ideal place,
The champion of speed, and lack of grace,
Who leaves the cautious mind in disarray,
And sprints beyond the cold necessity.

 

The Pencil

The voter stands, a tremor in their hand,
The ink, a stain upon a promised land.
Each mark a whisper, or a silent scream,
A tiny tremor, shattering a dream.

The paper waits, a canvas stark and white,
To hold the judgment of the failing light.
No grand pronouncements, no triumphant sound,
Just graphite scratching on the hallowed ground.

A single stroke, a choice made in the hush,
Can quell a fire or ignite a gush
Of doubt, of fear, of futures turned awry,
Beneath a solemn, unforgiving sky.

For in that line, so fragile and so thin,
A world can crumble, where it could have been.
A fragile seedling, nurtured with such care,
Crushed by the whisper of a graphite tear.

And so it is, when shadows start to creep,
And promises that once were made to keep,
Begin to fade, like ink upon the page,
Hope dies with the scratch of pencil on this stage.

 

The Benefactors

The city was a circuit, bright and fast,
Its voltage drawn from towers built of glass,
Where silent, calculating minds convened,
The architects of markets, sharp and keen.
They were the spring beneath the granite floor,
The tireless payers, always asking more
Of themselves, but feeding every beam
That held aloft the civic, waking dream.
They were the few whose hefty, annual share
Kept libraries lit and paved the thoroughfare.

Then came the tide, the ballot box decree,
A promise whispered, "Now the wealth runs free,"
A shift in mandate, populist and loud,
That sought to rearrange the prosperous cloud.
The benefactors watched the tally turn,
Not with a shout of anger, but concern,
For policy that cracked the fiscal frame,
And called the engine that sustained them, blame.
The victory roar obscured the quiet dread,
And the heart of commerce knew its lifeblood fled.

They did not burn the bridges; they just left.
A calculated, careful, swift theft
Of intellectual capital and mass,
A shadow falling on the polished brass.
The wires cooled; the bank accounts grew thin,
As assets vanished where the new laws spin.
No grand procession marked the final sell,
Just movers loading vaults and saying, "Well,
The structure’s changed, the risk outweighs the gain,"
And silence swallowed the departing plane.

And then the city, starved of golden grace,
Began to show the hollow in its face.
The high-end tax, the budget’s massive well,
Where services once thrived, began to fell.
The civic sieve, once filled with lavish fees,
Now filtered only dust and slow disease.
The pothole opened, hungry on the street,
The streetlights dimmed for lack of funds to meet
The simple cost of current, oil, and wage,
And sudden poverty turned history’s page.

The grand museums shuttered, cold and vast,
Their marble halls reflecting only past.
The schools, dependent on the generous flow,
Saw classroom size inflate and knowledge slow.
The newly-elected, standing in the void,
Inherited the future they destroyed:
A hollow shell, a monument in shade,
To what occurs when engines are betrayed,
And when the heavy lifting, scorned and spurned,
Removes the light from where the lamps once burned.
The city slept—a carcass dry and still—
Killed by an election and a vanished bill.

(fell⁴   /fel/ adjective

1. of terrible evil or ferocity; deadly.)