PAD Day 10: Darkness and Light

My poem today was a "triple prompt": I used the NaPoWriMo prompt to write a "simultaneity" poem, about several things happening at the same time. I also used the Poetic Asides blog prompt to write a "deal" and/or "no deal" poem, and I also employed the word bank from the Sunday Whirl blog, using all twelve of the words (stranger, drive, bread, light, on, switch, growl, devil, off, shy, stripe, snatches). Admittedly, The Poetic Asides prompt got the short shrift, as my poem only mentions a "deal" in passing, and the word bank was a relatively easy one to work with, but I guess the result turned out all right, if a bit dark (despite all the "light" references):

Simultaneity

Right now, as I flick on the switch in my bedroom,

someone else in my neighborhood is turning off

the light in theirs. On the next block, a raccoon shies away

from a garbage can when the motion detector light

goes on, but not before snatching a crust of bread.

In the next town, in a room lit only by a laptop screen,

a perfect stranger reads one of my poems online,

while some kid in the dimly lit parking lot of a convenience store

decides whether to hold it up.  A junkie in the nearby city

makes a deal with the devil under a strobing halogen street light,

while in the next state, a man who has been driving

with a broken headlight and two days without sleep

drifts over the middle stripe in the road.