Poem: Red Light

 

Red Light

 

degenerate eye, 

stalker over undercarriages,

do you see the nightcrawlers 

stranded on tar by rain?

how they wriggle, drunken as lips?  

in the vodkas of the passenger seats,

in the lipstick-smeared jugular tantrums,

in the necking, the hunger of the suck,

 do you see

 

the mind-blasted drugs 

over the armor of each and every heart?

how the brutal neurochemicals 

tear the shell off a human crab?

do you see,

in the intersections of satin on denim, 

in the forbidden lusts, hostage to rituals,

the danger zone of raw passion?

do you hear 

the asphalt-burnt groans 

boiling off the urban griddle,  

those last sighs of the mangled fallen?

do they wave farewell, 

fingers crooked in the crash, 

gutted roses torn on the floorboards, 

next to wilted cheeks of teenage char?

do you see, half alive,

for the barest glimpse of a moment, death itself?

there, the outline of a skull,

as it peeks beneath a once-happy face?

do you see it, breaking through,

to mock whatever's left, 

testing the lie?

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9/26 eds  I don't really want to understand 

7/30/25 ... an abominable fraught poem ... 

8/15/24 ...