Chiaroscuro

The black-and-whites prowl inbetween the angry chalk and bitter ash
And black girls boosting tv scatter, shadows from a camera flash.
Two old guys find their chekers-boards and lawn-chairs smoldering in trash,
Sit outside the gutted general store and play.

The sun hangs zebra skins of shadow down below the fire escapes
At white-wash trials the jury sort the angelinos from the apes
On videotape the play of light and dark defines the hidden shapes
But every playback smudges them to gray.

And from the blackboard jungles to the white house now it's understood
The color of your stetson's all that separates the bad from good
A tar-and-feather perfume lingers on black shirt and daz-white hood
There's flecks of blood upon a black beret.

And white lies on black vinyl theach how to ebonies and ivories
Can put their balance in the black while white suburban families
Buy records, yet upon the subject of the cracks between the keys.
They find they haven't anything to say.

Through headline-colored cities flicker visions from the silent age
We're given bars of dark and slats of light with to build our cage
The minstrel show the only act we know and life is but a stage
Where right and wrong make weary cabaret.

As God and Satan, Mazda and Ahriman, Set and Ra they guise
While from the gods, in penguin suits, we hiss, applaud and moralize
Then walk home through the cocaine and the cinders, nurse our alibis
And in the chiaroscuro steal away.

Alan Moore, em Alan Moore's Songbook