Mean Streets

Newspaper blows along rain-washed streets, dying echoes of hash tags and tweets promising hook-ups, flash mobs and meets, long gone to their bed-sits and urban retreats. Puddles painted with neon gaudy, could be Mancunian, Scouse or Geordie, late night streets, care-worn and tawdry, home to the reveller, the lewd and the bawdy. The siren's wail, the drunken fight, the running feet of the loser's flight, the screams of anguish hidden from sight, sounds of the city, heightened at night. Couples and couplings lurching and lairy, high on the octane of Jack and Bloody Mary, wandering zombie-like, staggering, starey, on late night streets, decadent and scary. With dawn's promise come different sounds, the rubbish collectors doing their rounds, policemen sorting the losts and the founds night washed away like old coffee grounds.