Curfew

The glow of neon on stone storefronts seems
A false enchantment promising void heat
And every shut shop shows unfinished dreams
Barred from completion by the steady beat
Of unimpressed and all too concrete time.
The night implies what it cannot deliver
Catching imagination in quicklime
Only to watch it struggle there, and quiver
Unable to escape, to move, to breathe
Caught in the bare reality of dark
In which the terrors of the city seethe.
No wonder shops are shuttered like the park;
The day has left, and in the harsh half-light
Dusk's promise turns to lies by bleak midnight.