~Behind The City~

When darkness murders daylight,
smearing saffron splatters
across the sky and streetlights
battle heathen shadows.
When postprandial conversation
is confined behind woven shutters
and suburbia stagnates,

neon children awake.

Walking aisles in soulless shoes, past winos
proposing to lonely arcade mannequins
at barren jewellery shop displays,
cardboard kings lost in the haze
of whisky sweat and regret.
Through serpent alleys where prayers
are vomited to microphone bushes
and solitary siren calls time

on casual violence,

nightclub prince, with social habit
lays down lines of pyrite promise
to infuse thoughts of gaudy moth
in her senseless spiralling suicidal flight.
A love bite crime in no name passion,
where dawn reveals only memories
in cold imprinted pillow

and faded scent.

Normality stirs to coughing shutters,
raised to honour resurrected sun
and lost-in-action bottles queue in
anticipation of reenlistment to bar brigade,
while assassins slip quietly from
the bed of their kill, all this is hidden
when morning reveals,

life behind the city.