The Usual Suspects

In the hushed hush of an empty avenue,
Where lamps flicker like tired heartbeats,
The city keeps its ache on the back of the night,
And whispers ask, “Who’s the usual suspect?”

They are the quiet ones who haunt the water‑tide,
The man in the cracked scarf, the woman with the scarred arm,
The child who never quite leaves her crayon, bottom‑lined,
And the stray being that smells of the land.

There’s the inevitable buzz that follows the rhyme,
The policeman’s thoughts weighed into every pause,
The drug runner’s footsteps echo a nervous chime,
The wink that means “I’m on that clause.”

Beneath it all the crime‑flicker drags by secret code—
Colour the truth with a fiction reminiscent,
A flick of a card, a swiftly shifted node—
A bulging box of pencil‑greased pages, perfect.

On a rain‑slick street, the night draws a line;
The Usual Suspects, playing the same game,
In a world of ink, these ghost‑like figures shine,
Watching each other, masking the flame.

When dawn pulls its bow from the dusk, on patience they lag,
They run the day’s script on someone's other side,
And in the end, we all expose the flag,
To our own black deep‑chart lanes that lied.