Black sky
give way
to vaguely violet stars.
Back set,
2-D silhouettes,
yellow streetlights
pale and drawn.
Somewhere in between a dream
and the waking dawn.
Watching through the windows
as lovers come to call.
Voices are like music.
They yell and raise in pitch.
Low tones and melody fits
in with the sound
of far off freeway traffic.
The perfect cover for a tryst.
How does this exist?
Cardboard cut-out world.
Too clichéd to be risqué,
but full of hidden danger.
Hard to imagine any place
more corrupt, or stranger,
but we get up
and we arrange the backdrop
just so.
Rain falls,
and in the purple glow
the blacktop streets
lead us low.
Alley children
and lost gutter mothers.
Showtime windows closed
at every Apollo.
We don’t’ hear the cries
through the closed windows,
just that far off
freeway traffic roar.
Dark night.
City life.
Stray cat shadows
and a dog barks
at a seemingly regular interval.
Distant from the crystal
high rise missile silos;
this is where the life is.
Under this strange luminescence,
that shows us all
in our jaundice.
Sick and farthest
from the womb
that brought us,
then forgot us.
We live forever
in this constant twilight.
Lit by the street signs
and the never quite quiet life
of our slice of the city side.
Retire under violet starlight.
HG – 2022
