The battle fought inside your heart turns not
back the sun for any piece of ass.

A girl in a movie theater
sits watching a movie about
a girl who sits in a movie theater watching a movie
where characters always look back at each other
into the darkness
into the darknesses made of loneliness and heartbreak
and the pure black shadows of movie theaters

Ancient Egyptians are screwing
in my living room
uninvited but not unwelcome
their skin like cornhusks
at dusk shucked raw

What we need are more gray-haired folk with gumption
who’ve got brains enough and wisdom
to know what works, who know
they’ve little time to leave their mark,

I saw a boy on the subway with green eyes from somewhere else,
with bones from another sea, with thoughts he wouldn’t take responsibility for.
I wondered his smell—the gritty smell of a person—