A Moment After Next

The lemon sherbet sunset wept,
its golden tears running down the black cheeks of the city skyline,
dripping the last moments of the day's promise down into the gutters lining the streets,
pooling in orange-black swirls before disappearing into the sewers with last year's trash.

And as the buildings looming overhead began showing broken teeth of light from scattered windows,
the people scurried like reverse roaches,
hiding from the dark that marked the passing of another chance to turn it all around,
eyes to the ground,
afraid to look too far ahead into the sinister blackened brow of the not so silent night.

Mocking feeble attempts to bring the future to bear,
the sun stands sentinel in the sky,
Presiding over the waning minutes of its present dominance,
looking past itself and beyond the night nipping at its heels,
never slowing or finding reason to yield,
the roaches once more
finding reason to run across Earth's kitchen floor
seeking the tomorrow horizon and score,
keeping points not yet won in a tally of hopes and dreams yet to come.

Mist in the air swells to raindrops
on Mission streets, with melodies
of mariachi drifting from cantinas,
wind whipping plastic furniture sheets, their snap
like screen doors slamming,
hollow echo down an empty alley,
stationary tumbleweed of discarded cardboard dreams -
slogans for pocket change abandoned when they failed to fill
cups not running over,
sleep being rubbed from between the sidewalk cracks
broken backs of overhead bus transfer lines
and the odor of over-ripe fruit wafting onto passerbys -
their eyes,
somewhere in future tense
a transgression devoid of recompense,
quests for next week that make no sense,
wrapped in the shroud of an unfathomable grasp at destiny,
quite simply,
I can't rely on tomorrow to save me
with all the hours that it brings -
because forever will give me maybe
but now will give me anything.