Vasant Vihar Arcade an hour past midnight,

An hour past midnight

The night birds are out on the streets

Locating their day's bread.

The garish red lipstick, and the glitter on their jeans

Talk of Glamour and glamour-coated agony.

The yellow of the chrome plays hide-n-seek with every passerby.

A large yellow 'M', neon and proud of its American origin and obese heagemony,

Spreads its legs for the ones with the gallant wheels.

And she grins at the squalour around. Not knowing.....

A bunch of tall coloured men lurk around.

Sharing a joke or two in native speech.

The kind they used to call the Niggers.

Far away from home their genitals ache.

And they see spectacular, buttery, shapely legs.

And skirts, eager to slide off, covering one fifth of them.

And their genitals ache.

A dark shadow sits in a corner.

His dreams shattered and the pieces of those ruins scattered all around.

He looks down on each piece, his pencil scratching his cranium, and recollects a faded memory each.

His genitals ache. His gullet is dry. Almost choking him.

One last cigarette, one last drop from his hip flask.

And dreams of one more for the road.