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A Love Letter to New York (Fuck This City)

from N​.​Y​.​C​.​E​.​P. by Kevin P. Gilday

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lyrics

A Love Letter To New York (Fuck This City)

Fuck this city
Fuck this city for creating unrealistic expectations
Fuck this city for having everything I could ever want
Fuck this city for making me never want to leave
Fuck this city for not giving a fuck
And fuck this city for not being mine

Everything is different here
The streets have been plucked from my memories
Cross bred with a thousand film references
Infused with my favourite records
Beamed from the TV to my brain to here:
Scorsese's mean streets,
in Woody Allen's Manhattan
With a mumblecore Brooklyn just over the bridge
While a marquee moon hangs in the sky
This is the city I dreamt of

And you didn't even have the manners to disappoint

The centre of the universe
And not self proclaimed like a certain London
But organically sculpted by time
Forged by a million immigrants
With dreams but without a dime
And I won't romanticise
Struggle and suffering
While some still do
But this city was built on the back of working men
And it was from their toil it grew

I want to open myself up to it
Let its polluted air seep into my pores
Let its symphony of noise infiltrate my ears
Let my brain be overcome by a chorus of mores
More
More
More
More than anything else
I want to let it overtake me

Like that old Chinese lady in Queens
Who loved New York so much
The metro lines appeared on her face
Wrinkles mapping the city
Or Ahmed who traded us Bagels daily
Filled with cream cheese
and the entrepreneurial spirit
Which still sustains

And the neighbourhoods
Always the neighbourhoods
A metrocard becomes a passport
Granting access to distinct states
A mere collection of streets
Typified by singular aura and traits -

Park Slope's chilled out lull
LIC's defiant clamour
Greenpoint's small town vibe
Chelsea's grit inflected glamour -

All under a roof of carbon dioxide,
Possibility and stars
New York, I love you
But fuck this city

credits

from N​.​Y​.​C​.​E​.​P., released June 9, 2014

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Kevin P. Gilday Glasgow, UK

Kevin P. Gilday is an award-winning writer and spoken word artist from Glasgow, Scotland.

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