Dear Gotham: A Slam Poem

I lost my identity
It disappeared the day I called it Secret
My Secret Identity
How could I know one day it would become a secret to me too?
When did I become more comfortable with my underwear on the outside?
Now I fly the streets at night
Suspended by the city’s invisible puppet strings
As I spin my wheels, my head spinning
I remember playing Batman and Robin as a kid
When did that stop being a Joke?
It stopped the day the Joker no longer laughed at child’s play
And took more joy in children’s screams
What happened Gotham?
What kind of bleak, post-apocalyptic, post-industrial, post-consumer society thought up you?
Your people are dying, Gotham.
Consumed by fire, consumed by hate,
Costumed by their own gaudy misdeeds
Your streets stink of the poor and down trodden—
Trodden into the dust of your crumbling walls.
Alleys scattered with the most beautiful of mankind in the most repulsive destitution.
Do you embrace the ugly, Gotham?
Do you welcome the misshapen misfits?
Does your modern gothic architecture beckon like liberty’s silhouette from across the sea?
Who is left to clean up, but those who created the mess?
Our ancestors built this city on the bones of the dead—
My ancestors built upon your dead
And I alone have sanity enough to stop it.
My heart is black like this city.
Black with soot. Black with broken dreams
This city never had dreams.
It only had the broken blackened people who knew better than to dream.
Count me with the dreamers, Gotham.
Tell the folks back home I pulled this city up by my spandex.
The Bat Man was an appropriate title in a city where the evil cry out their sonic song
Where the glint of hope in a child’s heart cannot be seen through the smog.
The Bat Man. Good or evil—in this city all signs point to yes.
I used to find confusion in their doubts of my intent
But how could they see anything but bad intentions in a city like this?
Where are born the worst scum of the earth—
Sent to disrupt the already disturbing existence of these wretches.
These wretches that crawl across your dirtied streets,
Slither through your slime
They come out like night crawlers in the dark,
Looking for dreams to make nightmares
Their muddy hands thrown up in front of their faces as dawn approaches
Are they afraid of the light?
Gotham, are you afraid of the light?
Or do you just find the dark more enlightening?
In the dark the demons come out.
They are locked in little gilded cages in the light,
But their pen doors are unhitched in the last fleeting rays of sun.
Of sun and of hope.
The demons play upon the temples of Gotham’s people.
They tap-dance across craniums until the pitter-patter echoing through the skulls bid a Scarecrow come and play
We are all afraid, Gotham.
Of bats, of leather-clad cat burglars, of the seething poison that you spew.
We are afraid of you, Gotham.
What are you afraid of?
The better side of humanity?
I picture you 100 years—
No, 1000 years ago Gotham.
I picture you with gullies and meadows, and no smog so you can see the sun.
What wondrous wildflowers used to bloom on the streets that are now decimated by Harvey’s dented coin
I know better than to think of you like this.
You were the breeder of pond scum from the beginning and you will be the breeder of pond scum until the end.
Oh but the end could come more quickly.
You were built on mysteries that not even Edward Nashton himself could answer
But riddle me this, Gotham.
While women scream themselves awake from night terrors about your hallowed streets
Why do I carry on the way that I do?
Bats are not solitary creatures by nature, you know
I am here, darkening your streets with the shadow of my wings,
Bringing enlightenment to the people.
Do not fear, citizens of Gotham.
You’re knight of the dark night is here.
I watch from on high, my senses buzzing with the thrum of Gotham’s hum.
Not so much a hum as a roar
I watch a woman get mugged,
Watch the thief run down east 53rd and I know it is no use following him.
A few dollars and some pennies, maybe.
Not worth whatever it should be worth.
At the end of the night I find myself drunken with apathy,
Dribbling curse words down my chin,
Making spit bubbles out of my shattered emotions.
The sun rises and I am reminded about the poor scattered souls, who made it through the night,
To live another day in this city.