Dead City

Methamphetamines shower
peeling billboards blurred by smog haze;
a drunk swaggers through the last greasy drops of sunlight leaking into the gutter with booze and gasoline;
yesterday’s lottery tickets strewn among beerbottle shards,
wasted as vagrants outside the laundromat
snorting powder that could pass for soap flakes
and swigging moonshine in the lurid glow
of streetlights buzzing half-extinguished,
every door another slot in the mausoleum.

Backalley philosophers and sewer prophets
sucking on the last dregs of their joints warned all the children old enough to kick a can or syringe into the gutter:

Ain’t no miracles round here kid
and if you see something rising out of the shit and filth
don’t fool yourself it’s just the stench
even that moth buzzing in the streetlight there
knows it ain’t really the moon
you wanna dream see that fortuneteller
Christianne or Christine or Christmas whateverhernameis
behind the Dumpster there second floor
right above the convenience store apartment 2A
one with that string of blue lights in the window
she’ll map out some sort of future for you
course she’s blind in one eye

Eyes live to believe they don’t see what they see:
bottle smash siren shriek lightbulb explosion
masks duck behind Dumpster fortresses—
pointing fingers guns bangshot spiderweb of glass
baby screaming woman wailing nonhusband slaps nonwife
nonchild shrieks the anguish of every nonentity;
Christine or Christianne’s window still glows blue.

Dawn cuts through the nightshroud,
swirling iridescence into a pool of petroleum
mirrored in facets of glass on the asphalt;
a slosh of spilled coffee mingles with rum and cola syrup oozing curbside, splattered by the kids’ sneakers as they hopscotch to school in morningdusk.
.
The streetlight moth never found the moon,
but spreads its wings and follows a finger of sunlight home.