City lights, another word, another world,

Dressed up high-rise fashion plates,

We are users, all of us, who walk the city,

Lights, like words, illumine us, illumine them,

Creating pink and deep brown shadows

Where night hawks never fly.

Streets of red and green, soon vagrant yellow,

Start and stop and can’t decide:

Will the storefronts turn us on?

Will we enter their domain?

Will we choose white, after all?

Or has the winking, hypnotized?

Signs seduce us, sex in public,

Carnal knowledge scruples trading,

Billboard roadside, sorting puffery,

No virtue left to thus atone,

We are naked, stripped quite naked,

Hues fade out, and we’re alone.

Message, message, meta-message,

Can you read the brash intent

Of the shifting, pressing glare,

And not just shrivel and grow small?

For lights will strip you of your honor

If you neglect the hidden stars.

Spotlights, limelights, start at twilight,

Searchlights, stop lights, redlights, too,

Neon, halide, incadescent, losing,

Watch, lest lights do that to you.

Dim lights, bold looks, sleight of hand, 

City magic just ignores the moon.

Let the grid go dark, let elevators freeze,

Let lights fail, and we may discover 

Uptown for what it really is:

Addicted, co-dependent, alien,

Lying bleak, morose, and soon asleep,

‘Neath the waking irredescent sky.