Yellow lights

This is a poem about yellow lights in NYC. It's really a large play on words with the word yellow.

Yellow is the burn of accelerating white walls. Catching them and saving them in your rearview mirror. Never to be spoken of only to be celebrated. Breaks that antilock rob us of screeching tires. Tires that remind us of bank robbery getaways. The streets are glossy shimmering like something out of a Scorsese movie. Then, suddenly, the cruiser we didn’t see behind us hits the whaler, blairs the lights and turns yellow into the shiver I feel down my spine. He passes me as if to say, "that’s right sir I can turn you yellow anytime I please." With obstacles blocking my psyche and are slowly removed, yellow becomes a promise I make myself. A promise never to take that light again. But memories are short and people are stupid.

"Amarillo", my mother replies, when I ask how to say yellow in Spanish. "And what does that mean to you?" I ask. "What do you mean what does it mean?" She snaps. "It’s just a color".

To some yellow means cowardice and to others yellow is an old dog lying under a house dying. While to us yellow lights mean speeding up and beating the red like all New Yorkers do. Just don't tell any body.