The blonde in black leans against the iron railing,
\nExhales long and slow, whispering smoke,
\nA promise formed in the plume,
\nTells our man what he needs to know,
\nWhat he doesn’t want to hear,
\nAnd he disappears into the fog
\nThe sound of his departure cleverly masked
\nBy the thunder of the 9:45 Express rumbling through.
\nThe world is blacks and grays with bits of red for emphasis,
\nPunctuating flowers and lives and femmes fatales,<\/i>
\nThe drumbeat set by the cocking of revolvers,
\nA saxophone somewhere, a clarinet in reply.
\nThe timeworn detective shakes his head and grits his teeth,
\nThe corpulent crime boss leans back in his chair and brays laughter,
\nTwo thugs loom up out of the darkness like battleships or tanks,
\nAnd the women – oh, the women – lay in the heat and pout.
\nThe ice clatters in the glasses like dice on a table,
\nThe whiskey pours in after like a flood bearing down,
\nThe smoke is either from cigarettes or the early morning fog,
\nAnd the screams are sirens or sirens.
\nWhat does the city want, demands the mayor –
\nThe city wants its own back tonight, the city wants revenge,
\nThe city wants to be heard, to be seen, to be felt,
\nThe city wants nothing but to be standing tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The blonde in black leans against the iron railing, Exhales long and slow, whispering smoke, A promise formed in the plume, Tells our man what he needs to know, What he doesn’t want to hear, And he disappears into the fog The sound of his departure cleverly masked By the thunder of the 9:45 Express […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-t8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}