SHINING STREETS

SHINING STREETS

The lovers are gone, the spirits remain.

How can this heart survive,
Always and forever in chains?

The joy is past, perturbation reigns.

Dejected I walk through the shining streets again.

The neon lights cheer me,
The winter snow feathers me,
Nightclub singers belt angelic songs.

Mired in misery I search my memory,
Sorting out the rights and the wrongs,
A lonely soldier lost among the throng

All the lights went quickly out,
Snuffed by the smooth sad umbrella of darkness.

And all across this toxic city I walk,
Like a playboy in his house of many rooms,
Each a thriving monument, each a bitter tomb.

The winos and homeless line the grates,
Starving flesh on brittle bone, cruel testaments
To the fickle hand of fate.

Prostitutes mutter enticing offers,
While the lonely drain their coffers for a night of love and beer,
And the dance is replayed on and on, year to lonely year.

Shell of the man I used to be, far from footloose and fancy free,
My energy is drained and I listen to rooftops as they soak up the rain.

The lovers are gone, the spirits remain.

How can a heart survive,
Always and forever in chains?

Clothed in lamplight and a strange psychic pain.
I walk alone through shining streets again.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2011
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED