Neon Lullabies.

Neon dissonance.
Simple elegance.
Light captured in glass.
Humming tunes from ages past.

Your every curve and line.
Makes your silhouette shine.
Dimmed by the grime.
Of your filthy street sign.

Sing your lullaby as I bask in your glow,
Till your light and hum is all I know.
Rising through the night sweet and slow.
Blurred by whiskey, sleep and smoke.

Am I the only one who noticed,
The siren the dawn silenced?
Turned off as the night fades to dawns seams.
As I sleep off the hangover and in my hazy dreams.

Dream of the bar, your voice, and the night.
And sit staring at the star hiding from the light.



To be honest I really don't know where this poem came from.
But I do know what inspired me.
It was a scene from this old movie I watched with my aunt as a kid.
It must have been a Sunday morning before church.
It was raining outside i think and we were watching random movies on the TV.
She was running her fingers through my hair and reading,
And I was glued to the TV.
There was an old technicolor movie on. I wish i could remember the name.
There was a singer bathed in red light crying while she was singing this old jazz number.
In the back of a bar.
I remember thinking back then that it was so sad for someone that beautiful to be crying.

Blindsided by the memory it occurred to me that my memory of her was like a neon light on a street sign.
Beautiful, singing a song no one really listens to in a place so dingy that no one really appreciates the talent, the emotion or the beauty, turned off at dawn so no one notices, and the real irony of it being that she was probably doing it to escape the life she was living then. (and yes I know it was just a movie.)

But the truly sad thing that struck me was that, maybe i'm the only one who noticed her. That thought kinda shook me. As the reality that day light brings to all night owls and they sleep off the night's escapades or move back to reality, they'd simply forget the ageing starlet who entertained them, their memory further dimmed by the whiskey and cigarette smoke. But I can't forget her. I remember the bar the voice and the night. And i remember the sadness that gripped my breath when I sat staring at the star hiding from the sunlight. It seemed hopeless to me, that someone so beautiful, talented and gifted would be lost and unappreciated in a world like that.

It shook me to think that a life was being squandered, as many of us squander our own lives...