Tenderloin Blues

Nighttime city buses,
passengers bathed in
fluorescent gloom
sit silent,
every corner and crack illuminated,
no one casting a shadow--like the undead
prowling an ancient Carpathian castle.
There were two worlds--worlds apart--
the stark,
bright realism
of the interior
and the impressionist outside
where colored lights
bore through the darkness,
smearing and dripping,
splotching and streaming
onto a dynamic canvas of night.
The bus stops
to take on more sad ghosts.