if I were uncivilized I’d
have
hammered my feet to slivers years ago,
and left white watery
streams of bone.
the street dogs would
come
and leave with splinters
of me jutting
from their gums.
since, though,
I have wallet and flats,
I may
furious
ply the pale concrete block six ten forty nights—
and leave behind
no thing,
returning late to the fecund smell
of the hyads sleeping in the grass
and your soapy hands
closing the kitchen blinds.
perhaps those that live
there
are smooth european youth,
with stealthy european eyes
and sophisticated lusts.
but then, youth
are youth,
you know:
gullible, apejawed, raunchy.
one p.m. I saw your sons,
sweeping nightly
through glittertown
with girls,
huffing in the gutterpits
of their skin.
I am out
with the sticks of autumn
cringing like loverbodies against cold ground,
and in their private shadows
sticky leaves clutch and simper.
beneath the heel of me
they are made pulp
while my voice grunts wetly
kismet, kismet and
thick clouds
sop the moon’s
white blood.
