3am in the City

alleycat13 wrote:Standing on the center line, incandescent lights casting orange on the wet pavement…

There are good ways of trailing off a phrase slowly and there are bad ways. You just chose the latter. Using "..." is obvious and basically hits the reader in the face with the poet saying "Look! I'm trying to get you to imagine this fading away gradually in the sunless starry spread!". The readers are relatively intelligent, they can figure it out on their own. Use the words themselves to create the air that you are trying to portray. For example:

"casting orange on the pavement, kiss-wet from drizzling cloudy eyes"

That introduces a sense of the action moving beyond the pavement and up, away into the sky above and the infinite density of the "other", the light away. Yes, that was probably a bad example and I came up with it off the top of my head, but hopefully you are capable enough so that you get the point and come up with your own improvement.

Ten stories of windows reveal a staircase that no one is climbing.
Taillights fade into the dark and the scent of rubber and earth fills the night.

Why ten stories? Why not a hundred? A thousand? Numbers are useless in any piece and especially a poem because the restrict the reader's mental access. You don't want to feed him on a silver platter; let him soar, don't confine him with exact numbers unless you have an allusion or reference and that is why you made mention of the preciseness.

There’s a man following a woman down the staircase now, urgency in his movement.
She’s leaving him, twisting around the rail with intention.

What does that last line even mean? "With intention" is such a boring and bland phrase that it could be interpreted literally hundreds of ways. You want to be open-ended in poetry, but not so much that it appears you were lazy with your constructing of imagery. Describe what she's doing so that a reader can point to her and say "Now that is intention!". Saying "twisting" isn't nearly imagery enough.

Five stories and falling faster to the bottom, shadows in a tower.

Again, the use of numbers draws away from any possible rainbow of imagination and creativity from the reader's point of view. Take that out.

"Shadows in a tower" is a strictly literal description, apparently; any reader can figure that out from the bare action. Every word of your poetry must have meaning in it of some sort, whether it be mental or even meaning to the senses. Change that phrase so it reflects this.

A door slams in the stillness of the street, and nothing changes.
Orange islands are still dotted on the tepid tar, and a car rolls smoothly by.
Slowly, the man climbs up the staircase as the woman walks away, heels clicking on the sidewalk.

Last line is pretentious. Take out "Slowly" entirely or if you really want to, replace it with a better term because words like slowly/suddenly/fast/etc are weasel words that only show the reader that you do not know how to put together a scene.

Overall, this did a decent job of presenting a shadowy urban night but its presentation is deeply flawed as to be expected. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week.

Hope that helped.

Hello!
Hmm, even though the rhythm is off, it still sounds good.
I, like the other, feel you should dwell more on the people. Talk about the disgust on the woman’s face, and the sorrow on the mans. Or is the woman sad too? This will help make a better picture in the readers head. It will also make your poem concentrate on one subject, instead of straying away. If you want it to stray, I suggest you make it longer.

She's leaving him, twisting around the rail with intention.

For this line, I think it would sound better if you put “She’s leaving him” on its own, for more dramatic effect. Of course then you would have to make the whole poem like that. (But then it may not be yours anymore.)

Five stories and falling faster to the bottom, shadows in a tower.

A door slams in the stillness of the street, and nothing changes

I like these lines.

I think with the proper editing, this can be a very nice poem.

Keep writing!
-Y