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One Night In Babylon

Stepping into traffic

By C S HughesPublished 2 years ago 1 min read
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The hairdressers with sanguine grace

And half-burnt cigarettes

Depending from their painted lips

Ash eternal in its about-to fall

Are savage on Thursday afternoons

Dreaming of the wine-dark night

Ship-drunk and restless flailing

Erratic as the snicker-snick

An alien reek of ammonia and formaldehyde

An octopus on your head

Making new-dreamt vanities

For the blue-rinse evening

A brothel and chrome Chevrolet

With those half-sloped fuck me eyes

Fishtails Bloody Mary streets

The traffic lights too late

For planetary deceleration

Sliding nowhere fast

Where the broken glass

In gutters spilled with kind hot rain

Shines like Friday’s fantasies

On Sundayfalling down again

With that burnt steel-radial persistence

Worn through til fangs are showing

The whitewalls gone a furious red

As if hell or Jesus came

On electro-glide suspension

Ice-cream pink and blasphemy blue

In my raw seclusion

A macassar disorder

Only time will destroy

The tiger-way it circles

While with an urgency for the blind

A harpy shrieks and shrieks and shrieks

Leaving me one step behind

Lost at this roaring intersection

surreal poetry
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About the Creator

C S Hughes

C S Hughes grew up on the edges of sea glass cities and dust red towns. He has been published online and on paper. His work tends to the lurid, and sometimes to the ludicrous, but seeks beauty in all its ecstasy and artifice.

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