This should be Paris, he thought,
dancing alone in the Tuileries, or
England, looking down on the Thames
perched atop the London Eye.
This was how he imagined it, not
trapped in the madding crowd, everyone
frantically multitasking, searching
for nirvana or a release from boredom,
from the quest for monetary meaning
that had trapped them in a maze with
no exit or end point, a Mobius path
always calling them forward
on the road to damnation which they
preferred to assume would be heaven.
He moved through the crowd, always
lonely, never alone, but he knew
that meaning was revealed in solitude
and all he needed to do was somehow
fall off the hamster wheel of commerce
into the silent cacophony of dreams
made reality, his war with himself
finally ending in eternal detente.