Pulp

Pretty soon, night will fall upon the city, And lives of crime animate spasmodically As Gene Pitney croons “A Town Without Pity” And the clubs and the gin joints open methodically. Hepcat jazzmen smoke reefers, shoot junk, The pimps clean their nails with switchblades laconically, Fedoras pulled low as they mind-jive to funk, And the neon lights crackle and buzz electronically, Breast enhanced blondes catch the eyes of their johns, Pouting and winking, the sale of depravity, For a price any vice can be practiced upon The surface of flesh, any crevice or cavity. Cops pound the beat twirling nightsticks around, Turning blind eyes for a bribe taken willingly, Failure to pay brings the world crashing down, “It just ain’t your day,” the cops whisper chillingly. Wiseguys hold court in an old pizzeria, Smoking and drinking and eating the scenery Their empire of family governed through fear, The rule of the gun and Sicilian ancestry. Corporate needles pierce veins of the damned, Chalk drawings map lines around death’s ideology Cigarettes sparked and the siren howls slammed Through the meanest of streets of pulp fiction mythology. In the world of the scribe, this pulp writer hack May exaggerate slightly for sake of the narrative, Yet film noir seems grey when reality’s black, At the end of the day everything is comparative.