words

headlights swing past like meteors
and we are coming out with the night,
a steady stream from cars and porches,
swinging in on dark ropes,
thieves, idiots, artists and stranglers
alike all in the reckoning of midnight.

pretty girls slide past dangerously
leaving behind perfume clouds
and the light impression of their movement,
their eyes close and they move to the sound
and they smile and shout and dance, dance
while the world spins and things turn.

strange people on strange crooked streets,
traffic lights on wires swinging in the breeze
and everything is calm and quiet,
somehow muted in the dense volume of now,
in the low hum of these weird machines.

-S.C. Martinez