Niagara Falls

I wander the busy midnight streets

Of a tourist town,

Passing by the crowded trinket shops

Filled with bright plastic people

And fast flowing cash.

I watch teenagers yell and speed by

In their parent’s expensive cars

Feeling self importance and power

Like a drug

Which deflates with age.

Cheap hookers flaunt goods which

Only cross-eyed drunks find impressive,

While they stare with empty eyes

At the dismal neon coating of their lives.

I wonder where in all the bright lights

And slanting signs

Is the Grandeur of Darwin,

As I listen to the drunks and stoners

Giving voice

To the last thoughts of a dying brain cell.

I pass a church which is more neon than holy

Offering wedded bliss for fifty dollars

And wonder when a bastion of morality

Became just one more curiosity on a tour.

A person could get lost in a place such as this

While holding a five dollar site map

And staring at a familiar street sign.