Coastal Town, Cold Sunday Night

I imagine ice shocked watery death
On saw blade breakers lit lurid
Neon orange by the street lamps.
The architecture joins me, depressed
Closed nightclubs next to empty hotels,
Tacky 42nd Street, fake Pier 39,
Blank eyed from looking out too long,
Over window ledge memorials
Beer bottles, lager cans, splintered plastic glasses.
Feral families wander by trailing
Children, in a place no longer childlike.
Fishermen bow whip lines into blackness
Fingering forms of indifferent life
Swarming deep in the liquid cold.
I feel alien here, this shabby night,
As a sneering north wind spitefully
Spits in my fearful face.

Keith Parker