Lining up at the flower vendor,
I detect an out of place smell,
it’s the smell of my city,
unpalatable,
it’s uncanny what humans can get addicted to,
what they can learn to like,
I have never been able to explain,
why I love my city,
why luminous surfaces do not attract me
as much as scarred faces,
and dying houses,
that this smell, is part of my epithelium,
and one part nitrogen, and three parts hydrogen,
is how I spell my city’s name.
A heathen poet 