I came across her at a ripe hour,

catching the breeze, daring fate, waltzing to a beat of her own,
all this in a drunken stupor, the beat playing on and on in her head.
Spectacles of horror, one night, every night.

Only fools mistake the time for a quiet time,
fools who fail to see how bright it can be,
the might of it all,
the confidence of it.

Night dogs walked between parked cars,
scratching boulevards like old records their mamas used to play on downtime.
Teeth sharp, backs arched, sloping those streets without a care in the world.
No straight line for them;
every movement was a sharp blow to the concrete.

Back-alley, dilly-dallying old cats launched shadows over concrete,
concrete shivering under the weight of voluptuous shadows.
They grew up too fast; their mamas taught them how to launch a shadow,
and the mamas before them,
and the mamas before them.

The creatures met beneath the red light,
cats brushing soft, tender, cheap perfumes
onto the sharp-toothed gargoyle-like animals,
and the dance began.

I remember a sharp A minor, eerily off-tune.
The street rippled like a backbone.
Trombones leapt from sewage pipes,
pianos from fire hydrants,
African bongos from the depths of a basement,
French horns from out of phone lines.
A cacophony of sounds formed from the drop of a note.

Then there was a howl of a thing clearly and undeniably cold.
Perhaps it was a dog, or a cat, or a rodent who wanted to really kick things off.
The dogs and cats joined bodies,
their paws scratching old pavement,
their shadows freezing new concrete,
one massive conglomeration, moving in sync.
Hearts were torn and beat on cold slabs, spurting out melodies and ditties,
lights torn from sockets,
ambulances screaming final notes as they sped through the hills of the town.

See, I thought it was my time, they thought it was theirs.
But the night doesn’t owe itself to any selfish crook behind a triple-plated window
or to one sorry sucker behind a shard of glass.
I become paralyzed and my limbs scream for some release while they give it up for some thrill.
No one wins; we just watch.