Poem: Long Night

Random Acts of Poetry

Long Night

Lean streets split the city
like deep cracks in parched mud.

Neon strings outlined storefronts,
their vivid sentences, inarguable.

Lamp-posts: black stick figures
painted circles of waxen light.

Sidewalks were dark rivers
full of strange fish.

Broken bottles, spent tires, rags,
papers, used condoms were underfoot.

Dead drunks squatted in doorsteps
outside worn tenements.

A cafe overflowed with apes
arguing over chessboards.

And overhead a second, poorer world
had colonized the sky—

windows full of sad faces, babies
crying endlessly in the dark.