The City and The Stars
Bruce Boston
The city is there regardless,
enormous in its conceit,
blank as the stare of a beggar,
hard as a skyscraper’s teeth.
The city is full of power.
Claim it with credit or cash.
Electrons racing to midnight.
Engines igniting the past.
The city is always laughing
at those it harbors and shuns.
The city is rich as a bakery,
thin as a trail of blood.
The city is small as an insect,
immense as the life it contains,
adrift in space like a beacon,
devoured by time and decay.
The city is very terrestrial,
dark and light as it comes.
Stars are strictly for backdrop,
eclipsed by the neon suns.
(First appeared in The Pedestal Magazine #11, 2002)
Bruce Boston lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon, and the ghosts of two cats. He is the author of fifty books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener’s Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has appeared in countless publications, most visibly in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase. One of the leading genre poets for more than a quarter century, Boston has won the Bram Stoker Award for Poetry, the Asimov’s Readers Award, and the Rhysling Award (SFPA), each a record number of times. He has also received a Pushcart Prize for fiction and the Grandmaster Award of the SFPA. He will be Poet Guest of Honor at the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards/World Horror Con to be held in New Orleans. For more information visit www.bruceboston.com.