A moment of violence

In the yellows of the streetlamps, dark shades are woven

Shadows patterns of branches on unmanned footpaths

Silhouetted arteries of the dusty concrete

There where window lights hang listless in the night sky

Like discombobulated fireflies, and the flaps of an owl’s wings

Sound like the night’s heartbeat.

There the boys are kings at night. And they speak in a scream.

(Jhaantu and Gillu and Baamba and Ponty.)

Perched on rooftops, vulture like, they spy cities at rest,

And their spider like fingers coil around knuckledusters,

Agleam in nuclear colours, and the coruscating hues

Of seedy billboards.

Inebriated, their words are frayed at the edges: rusted,

Moth eaten. The offspring of dead end jobs, their voices

Trickle down your spine like ice water. In slurry

Grunts, they decree capitalism an omnipotent malice.

Burps and vomits and talk of  women.

It stirs them from their slumber. It makes the blood,

Course through their veins.

In the streets paper dogs totter: their vermicular ribs

And reptilian barks, their rabid eyes, their spit,

Stretching from the mouth like the slender tentacle

Of some fairy book beast, hidden yet in the recesses of 

Sawdust throats. Soft billows of dust and a lumbering gait,

Every breath like a tubercular cough.

The boys launch stones from the roof: yawing and caroming off walls,

Ricochet bullets, tiny meteors, cling, clang. And they find

The soft flesh of the dogs, napkin skin torn, patchy red shades now.

Pinprick silence pricked by howls spat out like the overtures

Of a berserk charivari. In a shock of wind a white polythene bag

Performs a crazed jitterbug.

Armed with iron rods, the boys now drift in their yellow SUV:

A phantasmal apparition. A sudden swerve, a screech, a halt.

Doughnuts on unsteady roads. Black residue of tires etched across an

Empty parking lot like a frozen rictus carved out on cardboard

Pavements. Torsos dangling out car windows like unstrung marionettes.

On the tip of their tongue a taste of whisky,

And mindless violence.

In a cul de sac, they see the dogs: panting in a corner

Quietly, all dead to the world, foam coagulated around the mouth,

The eyes filming. They coil their fingers around the rods tight

Like the legs of a spider wrapped around a beating heart. They kick

The paper underbelly of the dogs, and laugh. They raise their rods,

Unsteady, swerving, swivelling, and they mouth curses that sound

Like the ululations of a crazed lot. Chants of forsaken supplicants, godless.

And they stop.

For in the phlegmy eyes

Of the dogs,

The boys see

Themselves:

Overturned and disfigured.

And their hands quiver.