WHERE MOONLIGHT IS RED

This city seeps into your blood
and dripping from your veins,
trails after you,
invading each new world you visit,
grafting itself onto the embryo
of each new birth,
an extension of your new self,
and you know
you will not rise from the ashes purer.

Yes, you, hybrid of your past and today,
of tomorrow’s promises;
you know you will walk
into a tarnished future,
and cut your feet on broken dreams.
Fallen city!
Powdered under the weight
of a hazaar well-heeled, work-day feet.

Child of the city, woman of the world,
with your eyes brighter than traffic-lights
in the smoky evening heat - step away!

But where would you go?
Your pulse is the blur of buses and trains;
the song of car-horns,
and engines croaking moodily past us
on the burnt-black crumbling tar.

And this city will be
the shrug of your shoulder,
and the after-taste
of the sleeping scream in your throat;
in the deep glare of daylight it will be
the shroud that saves your skin.