NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part III

Artful, sultry silhouettes
Perfectly profiled in the muted glow
Snippets and snatches
Reveal the structured uniformity
Largely devoid, or perhaps just removed
Secure in the bunker
Of a constructed success
Emotionally charged
Unable to feel.

How well can you listen
How often do you hear
The wail of hunger from your eyes
The lethal beauty of your smile
The ranting thoughts unsaid
Living the part instead
Always wondering
Is it me, or is it them
Always wandering away.

And inevitably
The nightfall must end
Making time to embrace
Our humanity
So often discarded
In the dark souls’ closet
All so intimately interrelated
Brothers and sisters yet strangers
So very far removed in the morning.

NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part II

There is no bandstand
But the stage is set
Around a drum-kit assembled
The bassist begins to walk
An exploratory line
And the pianist listens
With a smile
An anticipatory enthusiasm apparent
As his fingers dance laughing
Playfully caressing the keys.

The social banter subsides
Attention shifts
Steel brushes vellum with a kick
The recently exploratory bass-line explodes
A complex aural feast
Filling the night with rhythm
Animating fingers and feet
Causing heads to sway
To the strident improvised melody
As the sound-check begins.

NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part I

Bright
Sunset orange
High-beam spotlight
Illuminates the night
Along this dead-end side street
Lined with shallow shadows
And a barely discernable
Avocado darkness artificially dappled.

Stunted conversations
And muted mutterings
Individual voices
Inaudible and un-unique
Raised in self congratulation
A cacophonous celebration
With glasses raised
“To me, to me!”

Expensively manicured
Attractively veneered
Self-conscious somebodies
Parading and posturing
On display in the round
In the social-circus ring
Uniformly costumed
All made-up, hiding.