Warning: Surrealism Ahead. Like your verse straight, I advise you to skip this one. The loneliness and despair that seep from the cracks of a deserted city -- especially the down-at-heels edges such as one sees from a train at dusk or dawn, prompted me to write this. Soon the train was running away! The contrast between the color and sparkle in the early evening -- even in largely deserted business districts -- and the greyed-out emptiness of the poor sections and industrial. . .you see where I'm going. {Maybe I even do--?} Anyway, here it is, warts and all. Pea xOx

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 Twilight, summer.  Air cotton candy that has gathered dust.   Cars spin away from the heart of a midway of self-mirroring ‘scrapers.  Grab the kids and a flick.  Shop, drink, grill.  Done, look for love.   Back on the midway, Brave and Stupid dream of what was.   Pre-dinner strip-teases featuring telephone poles and lamps.  Spotlights by Traffic Control.  Get down to pasties, skin into a dinner jacket or little black
dress with hints of smoke and the indigo Van Gogh starred above a yellow-chaired cafe.   Spritz grit with glitter.  Prop manager got the radiating arteries and interchanges jeweled sends a roustabout to chain “rubies, emeralds, and diamonds” around a mostly deserted heart.  “White gold.”  There, toss diners baubles to flash over. . .hotdog, hell!  Bring out your best champaign.  Oysters Rockefeller, and be quick!  
Unlike ever’ damn shell artist and barb-tatted con pops from a sewer or from under a bridge, Carnival hopefuls not pushing ecstasy are sent to the dark end of a queue won’t budge.  Soon hard-looking types are shoving them into pens with the other freaks..  Can’t breathe for the smoke.  Smell highly suspect.  Wadded napkins, used condoms, and sluffs of Big Bird-yellow and Barbie pink from shooting galleries
stick to feet and trigger sneezes.  Suddenly, a Krispy-Kreme-crumbed Crown Vic growls near.   Go back to the station and play with your bubble!  barks.  On your way, spread a few doughnuts around.  Might startwith the veterans trapped in those clots of rooming-tents pass all the time.  Injuring rides from rigged bids?  Their end, luck is a bulb and the energy to burn..  Something to hang or a burger trashed because the mustard went flat..   Carnival’s about over, y’heard?