city nights are paradoxes of quiet loudness and bright darkness
shadows at the edges of your eyes resolve into neon beings,
angels watching from the churchtops,
hallowed sirens spinning redbluewhitebright signalling to the heavens
stopping hearts with unknown fear and offering momentary lives until
the church bells toll on the hour and the sound
fills ears and breathes new life into
souls that still need resuscitating even after
all these years of hearing sins and punishments renounced
across the downtown radio & television-altar news -
prayers in dark quiet streets are made quieter by the faraway car horns as
crosswalk blasters singe the near-cool pavement through a red light -
no one asks for rain but the rooftop gardeners, yet it still patters down
sending figures scattering for empty doorways and forgotten
Superman umbrellas and lit-up gas station asphalt, anywhere dry enough
to sit and inhale the oildusted petrichor, watching the flickers of
streetlight halos in this dripping wilderness of metal plastic and cement -
petroglyphs betray the oldness of the stones, yellow black and silver
spraypaint proclaims visions seen in waking sleep: we are lonely
in the crowds (we are surrounded by breathing bodies yet see no one)
city nights are paradoxes
of unseen crowds
and unseen lights