The Way We Work

In a bleak back alley
in the City of the Angels,
Ice-blue eyes and those of twilight hue
meet, in perfect understanding,
At the still point before action,
before the running,
shooting,
screaming,
Between the sirens of the backup,
still too far away,
And the silence of the quarry
the unknown, waiting danger.

Two minds know, by instinct,
who will be the first to move,
and who might be the first to die.

Two hearts speed up their beat
in fierce determination.

And with ever-present fear,
the clear blue gazes say
the price of failure simply is too high.

So two good cops race in, together,
where wiser others fear to tread,
Into the sewers and the soulless dark
of the city of lost angels.