Asphalt Jungle

‘Eternal restlessness grant them, and let light forever be hid’
So intoned the defrocked Preacher – banished – on the street
the gutter, cluttered with sordid souls, tortured, despairing.
A Harlequin from another life sighs his requiem, alone
The thoughts of what he did
A heart turned to stone
And slid
Into the Asphalt Jungle

Grey light filters through the darkness
and the steam, while in the dawn’s early dusk
a distant siren screams, and cheerful sunlight
is only in dreams. While the Devil appears through the haze
Running, he’s late for work today
In the Asphalt Jungle

The Preacher and a haggard faced teen with shattered veins
and eyes – It’s restless under his wing, a bird injured –
forgets how to sing, and fell from the nest of its mother
in spring, and learnt to winter alone
In the Asphalt Jungle

They walk touching shoulder, barely missing the Barefoot Girl
Who is sitting listening to the groaning dirge of her wasted world
And thinking, trying to remember:
What it was she abandoned when she entered here
And how many circles in she is, and is relief in sight?
While the dangerous couple walks by slowly, she thinks that she might
try to find some shelter, before the fading of the light
(Night falls early in the Asphalt Jungle)

But lodgings are few and hard to find. As the Jester
still mourns his life gone by and far behind
the Preacher’s sitting there, his eyes are dull
with his epiphany of despair.
His companion lost
in the alleyways or stairs, or just forgot
the Preacher sitting there
In the Asphalt Jungle