Race_9togo

Apr 14, 2011 ⭐ View statistics (Premium feature)

Moments Of Clarity In Night City

Walking on Rush,
back in Night City after midnight,
bars muffled by cold and traffic,
hunched clots of shoulders bowing in the wind
freezing off the lake,
I slid by a canyon alley narrow between scrapers
and glimpsed

dark beauty, round curves tight,
swelling breasts and full lips,
wide hips,
oval face lit by orange
sodium light
in pit of night,
flushed hard with business
and boredom,
gaze turned away from grunting john
to me,

    her bangles beating time to thrust
    clicking time in darkness
    ticking time for someone else’s lust,

our eyes connected for
a briefest moment;
we came together
at the center
of the instance and
I knew

    fragility masked by hardened need
    loneliness shrouded by fake desire
    desperation fed by endless want
    and hatred for a  stranger's paying  touch

before the mask slipped back
and I was looking at
just another grasping whore
face sunk with too much anonymity
mouth hard,
eyes and eyebrows
asking if I wanted to be next,

    and she was gone,
    my footsteps ringing,
    taking me back into

the welcome dark again.

About This Poem

Last Few Words: an old one posted to test the advanced formatting. I'm inetersted to know what others think of italics in poems.

Style/Type: Free verse

Review Request Direction: What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Editing - polished draft

About the Author

Region, Country: Earth Vicinity (within a five light-year radius), ZZC

Favorite Poets: John Donne, T.S. Eliot, Serendipity, Emily Dickenson, Kailashana, Charles Bukowski, Kabir, Rett, Dalton, W. B. Yeats, William Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, and many other Neopoet poets; Neopoet has heavily influenced my poetry and my ability to write it well.

Comments

Race_9togo

14 years 3 months ago

Pretty good,

Indent works fine.
Text entry area is not wide enough, needs to be twice its current width.
Very easy to paste from Word 2007.
Very difficult to split lines once posted, without leaving a double space between the new lines (see last line of poem, there should not be extra space there.)

weirdelf

14 years 3 months ago

did you want feedback

on this as a poem?

Race_9togo

14 years 3 months ago

lol

Its Neopoet...of course I do, if you feel so inclined! I was just testing, but fire away; this is an old one from the old site, hence my "not actively editing", but feel free my friend.

weirdelf

14 years 3 months ago

I've got to ask

"rush" is drug slang for amyl nitrate here. A sniffer that pumps up your heart and boosts orgasms, popular in gay circles. Is that the "Rush" you refer to?

Powerful scenario, I can see how the formatting helps.

But I'm a bit of a purist, it is almost impossible to control formatting unless you use PDFs so I would generally recommend not relying on it.

Race_9togo

14 years 3 months ago

Hi Jess

Rush...oh yeah I know all about Amyl Nitrate, but I'm afraid the "Rush" mentioned here is Rush Street, a Chicago street famous for bars, restaurants, and back when I was a young and single man, a notorious center for prostitution, although I hear it's been cleaned up some in the years since I frequented the place. This poem is the result of a real event, I was on my way to a certain bar to listen to some of my friends play a blues gig when this happened.

Then again, "Rush" works both ways, now i think about it.

I know exactly what you mean regarding italics. I usually avoid them myself, as I'm sure you know, but this piece just seemed to lend itself to them. I had a devil of a time getting them right though. Andrew's new advanced formatting works pretty well, but as you can see there's still that last line double-spaced when it shouldn't be!
I'm sure he'll get it fixed real soon, though.

Eduardo Cruz

14 years 1 month ago

Jim

Where the hell did this come from?

This is a powerful write, exposing life at it's harshes, Yet showing the humanity of lost individuals.
Damn brother, I'm impressed!

The indent gave it a life of its own, I need to try it.

Eddie

Race_9togo

14 years 1 month ago

Thanks Ed

It's from the old site. I posted it to test the advanced formatting. I wasn't going to edit it, but I found a minor problem and fixed it.
I still see her, when I walk the streets at night.