Skyline Alibi

 In the cold night air I put the car in drive,
 Advance down the avenue with controversy on the radio,
 Roaming for closed cafes, delivering mazurkas.
 The Space Needle reaches for the stars
 Like a Lucas film skyport
 Surrounded by a city on clouds,
 Windows glimmering in coronal mass reflection.
 Empty streets, empty stores,
 Sleepless offenders on broken sidewalks,
 Arms in the cracks reaching to drag them under.
 Rounding the corner of Lake Union
 A blasted construction site breaks through the Earth,
 Sending me adrift down the Amazon
 With only the rosary to guide me
 Upon wings of the radio waves:
 Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,
 Blessed art thou among women,
 And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

 It repeats without mercy, echoing off the skyscrapers, 

 Reverberating through the periwinkle corridor of my soul
 To baptize me in a wreath of submission,
 Forgotten sorrows of a city sanctified by chant.
 Next stop is the shelter, where they all sleep,
 Where I am the only man allowed all night,
 Murmuring in their beds, those angels stolen from paradise,
 Forced to repeat it on the unstable pavement.
 Their screams erupt beyond the cemetery,
 Leaking through the sewers, waking all the homeless,
 Panhandlers spooked by a distant chorus
 That follows the rosary down twisted alleys,
 Entering their nightmares- those men who wronged them,
 Entering me.