There are cities 
that grow upon cities,

piling them up 
and spreading them out;
amoeba-like false feet
reaching down the cold run
corridors of transit

Markets grow up 
through the cracks -
some vast and hardy
tumors of commerce
while others are little 
card table kiosks
kicked into corners

The view becomes 
uniform & undifferentiated -
like an ocean,
sprawling to infinity
in all directions;
more complex than the sea
but equal in its
dispiriting sameness

In some room or another,
in that vast repository of rooms,
everything that can happen
is happening --
loving, killing, praying,
torturing, healing, 
and so on

Rooms are the city's cells;
the buildings - its organs;
the neighborhoods - its systems;
and we are but molecules 
in the city's scheme.