The night does not wear

any pretension. Above,

the moon like a slivered

fingernail lost in nowhere.

Here, propriety is dismantled

by sin. And the night moves

its sleek tongue across

the cityscape, stretches

itself out to the alleys

of the pursued, the pursuer.

Then tactics of silence. The modes

of survival. A demand for ethics,

the notion of lust. There at the end,

we know what to choose

between the two.