 
 Brooklyn Nightsby Charles F. Swett
 
                       O cold Brooklyn night
                       Dark and damp
                       Mist and wet soot
                       Shiny streets
                       Reflect blue and yellow neon       
                       Mr. Chianese
                       Closes his grocery
                       Someone's dog
                       Barks in the distance
                       
                       Last bus of the evening
                       Limps from one stop to the next
                       With its pot bellied men
                       Reading their newspapers
                       Who will climb to their two-rooms
                       To munch the sandwiches
                       Left by already sleeping wives
                       Sip a beer
                       And tumble into bed, exhausted
                       
                       The smell
                       Of a thousand suppers
                       Drifting down ancient streets
                       To join a forgotten ocean
                       Of earnest hopes
                       For working class children
                       And fleeting tender thoughts       
                       Of maybe lovers
                       All dashed against the grimy cobblestones
                       
                       Ghosts
                       Of Dutch settlers
                       Playing ten-pins
                       Roll a ball
                       Toward shivering hookers
                       The pure and the soiled
                       Share the night
                       
                       A grandmothers' gray hair
                       Kissed that morning
                       Hangs caught in the shoestore sign
                       Waving in the chilly breeze. 
                       
                                  -end-
                   Copyright (c)1993 by Charles F. Swett
