The city's own silence

I stole out from the club and it was snowing
a wet snow like rain,
sifting down it spat my cheeks and didn't stick,
went right through to the skin,
made wetter my shirt and
dampened the smell of smoke.

Walking I watched the halfbright
streetlamps lighting
the weak February blizzard--
the cineplex neon
hummed and the power station hummed
and a bum with his back leaned soaked
against old walls asked for change.

The white 1910 brickwork of Redman Records,
shiny and wet under stone-carved Indian busts
like it was painted yesterday,
streaks of nonsense graffiti blackened
by its rusted entrance gate.

A raingutter poured and splashed a river
ephemeral, a small misplaced waterfall
next to a taxi waiting muted,
blinker flashing soundless streaks.

Some barren dripping winter trees, small
and landscaped accordingly.
The empty lot only mud now (and above it
the storage building I explored once when it was empty:
all puddles and exposed steel beams,
black stairwells leading to beds of the homeless).

Over wet staggered blocks of sidewalk
I sloshed and felt it rough on my toes,
I thought of lying across a wet parkbench
here in this sleepy dark, looking up to the
rushing endless flakes and
counting myself among them,
just one thing in a volley of uncountable things,
drifting over Salt Lake City and
its mudded walkways, shouldered buildings,
shoestring tenements,
haphazard midnight dreams--

I walked alone on the vacant streets
and supposed the ringing in my ears
was the city's own silence.

--- ---

In February of this year I saw Cursive and Alkaline Trio at In the Venue in Salt Lake. I came out to this snow, and I fumbled around in it and wanted to remain in it a while, and instead got into my car as it warmed and jotted some things in my journal.