Off Main

** Off Main **
These teasing undercurrents
Slow streets on the back of Main
Where the less travelled go
And holidaymakers rarely seen
The deal making fast talking streets
Shadows linger longer here
Darkness clings to soles and feet
Like discarded bubblegum on tar melting summer's day
The smiles and frowns hide sharp teeth
Explosive anger and well practised fists
More than one knife rests ready
Against a mugger's hip
Waiting for the unwary or unprepared
Wanderer from a safer panorama
Unexpectedly plunged into Noir neighbourhood
Where the dames are bushy tailed and feisty
And ready to take stiletto-ed heel step up and out
Upon or over cooling body if need be
Of some naïve and sentimental Romeo
The men here are slap your back and broadly grinning
Until the bourbon or drugs dry up
The horse stumbles or wrong boxer wins
Or someone shows too much cash
Then the mind begins cunningly calculating
How best to split owner and property
And where a body could be disposed of
The wreckers yard down on 6th
In a park or crack house den
Somewhere all evidence can be destroyed
Or mixed and lost in the many crimes before
They are not stupid just over eager
Have not developed impulse restraint
The best chance is the latest and most immediate
In a line of chances to be taken
Which might propel them free
From these city mean streets
Put them on the better thoroughfares
Not realising if they were there
All who saw them would know
Mark them clearly as a grifter's cards
As the wrong type of person
From wrong neighbourhood
To people Main Street.