The Best Colors Have The Best Names

The Best Colors Have The Best Names
by Mike Pollock

This city
is killing us
in a way the drugs
can only dream of
The lights
a utopia?
Red, yellow...... green
with too many cracks
to avoid falling between
Do you even know
or remember my name?
or are we simply
destined to die unchanged
Yet, this city kills
still sleeping
a silent stalker of men
old husbands and wives
This drumbeat
street alchemist
poised with dirty tools
and homegrown particulars
Formidable, albeit naive
and lacking in age
this distance between
black and white,
and the closeness of gray
So close, yet
so forever far away
a mother and father
the jailbreak and star
But forever a child
whose voices will cry
together tomorrow
separate the day
Words... they're just colors
and caped men are blind
honed, cut with muscle
a stoop left behind.