A Whitechapel Moment

A fog of incoherent descent

on the impoverished streets,

alit in the glow of gas lamps

and the whetted stones from

Clydesdale hoofs on the

dusty, drury, cobblestones.

A trellis of bloom in a night's

tethered earning in tawdry

tulle... red, ripped, and spent.

Pollyanna walking to a brindle

of a hazy birthright writhing,

then marching in stride to macadam.

Each step a drunken death march

to a barren chatter of a silent surgeon's scalpel,

eviscerating a soul with no known enemies...

The silence was deafening.