Velvet Alleyway

Today’s gauntlet takes the form of writing a poem that imposes a particular song on a place. We are to describe the interaction between the place and the music using references to a plant and, if possible, incorporate a quotation – there will be bonus points for using a piece of everyday, overheard language.

I didn’t look at today’s resource but chose to recall walks in the red-light districts of Barcelona, Hamburg and Amsterdam and draped the sound of The Black Angel’s Death Song by The Velvet Underground over all three.

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Rosen wet cobbles quietly reflect the shadow hisses lurking in dark doorways,
The rusty edges of a viola scratch, grate and shred nerve ends,
As you strum along the alleyways of lust and need.
It’s uncomfortable here.

Here, where emotions are laid bare,
Lacerated, slashed and disembowelled by a vocal surgeon,
Machete chopped by a bass butcher,
In night’s paid-for moments, sensitivities are raped in plain sight.

But not in the day, when grey light reigns and no one sings.
Bereft of their neon sin signs, the lifeless buildings just sigh and lie.
Devoid of throbbing rhythm, of life’s sex disco,
They broodily hide their itch scented salacious secrets.

There’s joy behind those dirty doors and manky blinds that mark time.

Here you can choose or try to lose what shame you may hide.
Dare you start the game, or do you fear the loss of remain?
Here you can pretend to be whatever you want to be.
The stage is yours when the curtain falls on daylight.

But courage can be drained from veins, bled by guttural guitars.
When the whiff of a marijuana spliff may tease your senses,
As passing rain clouds tease drought ravaged land,
Where winds tap time against drying grass that withers dies.

And a faceless voice summons from the lyrical shadows,

“Hey, you looking for business?”

The guitar thrums its wilting goodbye.

Sometimes darkness creates its own light.

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