Palaces of damned souls
have green neon text frames
standing sideways like arches;
divine arrows, they guide
the paternal flunks, the tar-soaked offspring,
the lonely and the business bunch.
Here in these palaces, all sin is a freeze, all
lust is a spin.
Fairy lights are often flagged in a net,
to catch mischievous mares flinging
themselves against the glass displays
of overpriced clothing shops.
One finds when wondering the perpetual
lines of restaurants and cafes, the vastness of them
having a motherly touch, for
these palaces, they stretch like the sky and
they spread like the shepherded
fire ants of Gaia herself
And when ones welcome is overbid
they need only to follow the
evenly laid out, sorrow yellow street lamps
and bite their cheeks and bare the frost
for soon the polluted lux will lead them to
an overnight joint, a limbo of sorts,
where they can breathe anew.
On those red leather sofas- fast food
or the district kind- when the night seems
to crawl on its final limbs,
they'll lay and slip into sleep.
Some say they never do wake, that they
wither with the moon and then
haunt the attics of the dance halls
where they swirled and laughed and lived
in a previous life.