Night City Poem by Sheena Blackhall

In night clubs, lights are strobing,
Chat up lines beginning,
Cocktail glasses clinking,
Chunky pint mugs clunking.
Town's mascara eyes,
From howf and alleys winking,
Panda cars are prowling,
Gallus posers posing.

Skinny boy, a lonely skittle
Stands in a grocer's doorway,
Shivering, pale,
Sways like a bamboo reed,
Grass, in a drug-fuelled gale.
Laughing, linking arms,
Four girls spray-break a puddle.
In a jeweller's spew-splashed foyer,
Out of a ragged huddle of filthy clothes,
A filthy claw comes poking.
Missus, see some change?
The gruff voice, low and croaking.

Beggar, cuddles his empty sherry bottle,
Stubble around his face
Like thorns, dew-bright with spittle.
Music jazzes, jangles.
Pools of pallid light ring tall street lamps
Like garish gypsy bangles.
Taxis slice away like black pirhanas
Saturday night in down town Aberdeen
Cash till Hosannas!