It's About Time Poem by James Riviera

The shopping bags are all left in the street to melt and rot away
And there’s a man sitting on the corner with a harmonica, he’s waiting for a dollar to pay the rent
A lady in a fur coat passes by but gives no notice to the man on the corner with a harmonica
She doesn’t have time for people like him
A painter goes into a museum where his art was supposed to be hanging
He searches the building high and low but he can’t seem to find a single brush-stroke he can call his own
He walks down the street and kicks a can off the curb
There’s a kid in a field nearby playing soccer in the rain all alone
But the kid doesn’t seem to notice the rain
And the painter finds this most strange
So a man with a briefcase gets on the bus to get home to his wife and three kids
It’s been a good day
He’s made a bit of money and he’s taking it home to share
The bus takes him past a man on the sidewalk
He’s got a white v-neck shirt and patchy bleached jeans
His stop comes up at Thirty-Fourth and Rye
He gets up to go
Then he sits down
Then he cries
There’s an old black lady sitting across from him
She looks at him as thought this was her fault
As the bus pulls away from Thirty-Fourth and Rye
The bus comes to a stoplight behind an old Ford
There’s a guy and a girl
The girl opens the door
And steps out into the almost-night
And walks away down Twenty-Second Street
Almost dragging her feet on the cracked blacked cement
Up in a window
Across town
A woman looks out
Above the city and everything the city holds and what makes this place so magical
And why she has to leave
She gets out her suitcase
It’s old and has faded lotuses on it but she likes it nonetheless
She packs her favorite shirt and her favorite skirt and a tattered scarf that used to belong to her grandmother
Since the evening is breezy, you know
And she runs down the stairs of the Old Manor Building
Down seventeen creaky flights of stairs
And she brings her bag on the Number Eight bus and pays her fare and takes a seat
The man at the airport says there are no seats left