Concrete Garden

Neon lights acting like stained glass windows

Sirens screaming like a choir of the damned

I'm walking through the cathedral of the broken street

Concrete under my feet

Smell of ozone and fried grease in the air

I look for the sacred

And I find it everywhere

God is in the gutter

God is in the gutter

You go to the mountain to find a peace

You want the silence, you want the release

I find it here where the noise has never ceased

In the subway rattle and the engine roar

I find the silence at the chaos core

The click-clack of the turnstile is my rosary bead

Scanning the faces of the people in need

A homeless prophet with a cardboard sign

Preaching the gospel of the jagged line

The end is near, no the start is now

I tip my hat and I take a bow

Graffiti tags are the scriptures of the night

Written in spray paint, hiding in plain sight

See the city is a machine but a ghost is real

Grinding the spirit in the turning wheel

I meditate on the rhythm of the train

Baptizing the grime in the acid rain

They say this place is godless

They say this place is dead

But they are only listening to the voices in their head

Can't you feel the vibration?

Can't you feel the heat?

There is a heartbeat thumping underneath the street

Concrete garden growing through the cracks

There is no way forward, there is no way back

Just the present moment, sharp as a knife

Cutting through the illusion of this life

I breathe in the smoke

I exhale the prayer

The divine is hidden in the dirty air

Don't look up, look down

Look around

This is the holy ground

Yeah, it's filthy pavement

It's holy ground

They chase the horizon, I stand on the block

Time is a liar so I smash the clock

I'm watching the suits running for the deal

Running on the hamster wheel, forgetting how to feel

Every stranger's face is a mask of God

Walking the path that the martyrs trod

The drug dealer on the corner checking his phone

The banker in the penthouse feeling alone

The saint and the thief, the lover and the liar

All of them dancing in the same cold fire

United by the gravity of their grief

Looking for a permanent relief

We are all just atoms in a violent dance

Waiting for the moment of the second chance

People ask me,"How can you meditate here?"

And I tell them:

"If you can't find peace in the middle of rush hour

You won't find it on the Himalayas"

The silence isn't the absence of noise

The silence is the space inside the noise

Look at that flower pushing through the asphalt

It doesn't complain about the environment

It just seeks the light

Be the flower

Be the asphalt

Be the light

The skyscraper's the temple's of glass and steel

Is it real?

Tell me, is it real?

The traffic lights are blinking red and green

The code of the matrix, the ghost in the machine

I am not apart from this, I am a part of this

The beauty and the ugly, the hit and the miss

Let the sirens scream, let the baby cry

Let the city live, let the city die

It's all perfect

It's all perfect

So I sit on the bench as the world rushes by

A quiet observer with a camera eye

Capturing the shadow, capturing the grey

Finding the color in the disarray

I don't need a monastery, I don't need a robe

I'm just a traveler on a spinning globe

My church is the station, my altar is the floor

I don't need to search for it anymore

So let the city scream

I am the whisper

Let the world spin

I am the center

In the noise... peace

In the dirt... gold

Right here

In this moment

Holy ground

(Sound of a lighter flicking, exhaling smoke)