City Lights

[jon1jt]

City lights follow me,
drag me down low, low, to hollow ground
where the Beat drums moan
See the circles twirl along dusty old metal fenders
Colors splashed on placid faces
Singing hymns, divine access for modern pretenders
Dazzling drips of red strewn on a fresh streetscape
Horns blow and white moons..Boom boom
Autumn leaves scurry and humans murmur
Love in fancy restaurants
Sipping sighs for the young, eager blemished eyes,
education failures and more terror scares
Across the way, half-furtive glances in siren trances
There's an empty park where jazz notes roam,
on and on like bubbles carrying messages--
Cigs and beer one dreams taking pictures over fences
Of trees writing poems...Snap! snap! CRASH
the whole thing like a Saturday morning hang over
Garbage men working OT, hung over
Some old lady mulling over charred glass
Empty suits with a stash
kids and screams and the homeless and scraps
Craps...that's rolling too

And it all fades and comes again...
In the incandescent glow, the subterranean flow,
of the city lights

[Xamonas Chegwe]

"There's an empty park where jazz notes roam,
on and on like bubbles carrying messages" I really like this image; it's nicely worded. Lots of shifting scenes in this poem, it reads like a montage of a city night.

I also like the way the second stanza is almost an afterthought, a coda perhaps. Good stuff.

[Petrarch's Love]

Jon1jt--I really like this impressionistic depiction of the city streets. You employ your language really effectively. A great poem to read as night is falling here in the city of Chicago.

[rachel]

That is so filled with truth and just about every emotion one could think of. As someone who works with street people and has been on main street in that dark night, sounds rising and falling, people cursing and weeping. Rich people hurrying by in case poverty, lack and insanity might somehow leap on to them from those sitting on the cement, I can really appreciate this poem
thank you.

[jon1jt]

Thanks all above for the generous remarks---your comments captured my inspiration for the poem! I'll be sure to check out some of your work, looking forward to it. Keep writing y'all, we're in this together! :-)