put it into context. really.

Midnight and the blood of mutts fall bleak and heavy. Cobblestones and concrete catch and watch it dry. Together, apart, engaged in a rough dance of death, dogs, teeth, dripping, drooling, bleeding, howling, welcome strangers to their circle as the sun welcomes violence to her streets. One jumps. Teeth pierce matted fur but do not stop, no, not until they scrape bone, rough and cold of victory. There are no whimpers – ‘all that’ stopped long ago – and so it is without ceremony that one dog eats another, picking organs from a broken neck and swallowing what, just moments ago, had coughed up nature’s blood, nature’s life.
Morning and the drink of last night was still yellow in their eyes. She alludes to nothing but he knows they mean each other. They do not speak, but then, what is intimacy if not barely interrupted silences? Bruises, thick and heavy, marked the paths of others – fathers, mothers, strangers – and the only thing to do was staring from the corpses of unburied foes. Beat up, gashed, from eye to chin, from nave to chops, there was no gallantry in battles – just swift ambition, towards nothing. Whilst he may not believe in her, and her, not in him, chance had brought them to each other, and chance, no doubt, would pull them apart when they could no longer use what the other had to give. Barren, both would walk away, believing themselves to have won.
Midday, though the cool sun did not dry the throats of youth – they were all invincible, safe from themselves and really, what else was there? Men of discipline reached tops of buildings and fronts of lines, only to be pushed off, wrenched back and fallen. There was nothing. No top to climb to, no front to push to. Only hot-blooded street-corners and old-gang-games to win. And so the winners were not men of sharpness, precision, ambition or drive, but those without consequence. They slept soundly despite the blood which stained their hands, gathering, clogging the fine lines which seemed to say, ‘I am me, I am real, I am somebody’. They did not care. What mattered was the win.
At midday the game was welded scraps of metal, gold and silver, ruby red stones and sparkling accidents. No one needed them – even the winners, the Keepers, would still be hungry, cold and wanting – but want was want, and the game was there for all who recognized it. Bare hands broke glass. Past protections of such supposed precious things were gone, and the boys, greased up and drugged down, took what they wanted. Old man at the counter sits hopeless. Care? He knows chance will have him get them soon, by way of blood or drug or fear. Nothing mattered, not that much. Outside in the light and boys divide up what useless treasures make them better. Words are for the weak, so beyond grunts and snarls and clinks of chance, street silence stayed, watching them dividing up the bones of a life long dead. Like Gods and Governments had once, twisted want followed actions, but also ran ahead of them, pre-empting choice.