Sin And Snow

Pale snow swirls along the neon-lit street.

It clumps in piles; trampled under the feet

Of passers-by as they keep to themselves,

Wrapped in rich furs and lulled by Winters spell.

Each stare down, watching as snow turns to slush,

Pulled along the street by the press and rush.

So many people bathed in neon light.

Each, all alone, with eyes devoid of life.

The street, lined with brightly lit restaurants,

Boasts of satisfying your every want.

Inside people meet, bathed in the warm shine

Of firelight; losing their souls in the wine.

They swarm all night, black ravens to a feast,

Gorging themselves like sweating, zealous beasts.

Crowding around the tables, the rabble

Fills the air with an incessant babble:

One toasts to his fellow merrymakers,

Another chokes, and panicked coughs shake her.

She looks around her in desperation,

But she finds fixed smiles and perspiration:

Only more pseudo gaiety greets her

From the dull, vapid eyes of the eaters.

As they resume their orgy of excess,

Bathing themselves in its fetid caress,

They drink the night away. As the hours pass

A wind rises and beats upon the glass.

Outside that wind rattles the neon signs,

Making their bright coloured, synthetic shine

Shake across the grey mix of mud and snow.

With the light and passers-by come shadows

Which shiver and shift with the gusts and gale,

Ever tied to their owner’s lonely trail.

It leads them past a darkened alleyway

Lit at the end by red neon displays.

Below, the old wooden doors burst open

As a man leaves to forget vows broken.

Inside the doorway dim green and red lights

Illuminate scenes of sultry delight:

Of dancing, hopeless and bare young women,

Enclosed by men and abandoned linen.

Their faces are shadowed to hide their shame,

Like those of the men for reasons the same.

But light plays on the contours of their form,

Sliding across their skin while they perform.

It reflects too in the men’s hungry eyes,

As through the thin walls come feigned pleasure cries.

There, a sweating youth joins his first union

With a naked woman; that communion

Of base passions and ecstasy, preaching

Of wet skin amidst their ardent breathing.

The wooden shutters are shaken by gusts,

While, for a purchased hour, they worship lusts.

Outside, wind shivers down the alleyway

And onto the street of moral decay.

There, lonely passers-by forever roam.

Drowning in bliss, mistaking it for home.

They are watched over by the neon signs.

Bathed in the bright radiance of their eyes

A life of cheap pleasures is begotten:

Wrapped in leisure’s, living is forgotten.

And so, forever on, the cold wind blows

In the neon city of sin and snow.