4.13.2023

the pervious skin

It was good getting drunk in the undulant city. 
Whiskey lopping off the day's fear. 
 
Dawn came with an element of Xanax. 
Dusk came and I dumbed myself down. 
 
Where there were brides, grooms—
these bored boysoldiers with iPhones and guns. 
 
I'm a soft target, you're a soft target, 
and the city has a hundred hundred thousand softs. 
 
The pervious skin, the softness of the face, 
the wrist inners, the hips, the lips, the tongue, 
 
the global body, 
its infinite permutable softnesses. 
                                                                    *
Soft targets, soft readers, drinkers, 
pedestrians in rain— 
 
In the failing light we walked out 
and now we share a room with it 
 
(would you like to read to me in the soft, 
would you like to enter me in the soft, 
 
would you like a lunch of me in the soft, 
in its long delirium?). 
 
The good news is we have each other. 
The bad news is: Kalashnikov assault rifles, 
 
submachine guns, pistols, ammunition, 
four boxes packed with thousands of small steel balls. 
                                                                    *
O you who want to slaughter us, 
we'll be dead soon enough what's the rush. 
 
And this our only world. 
As you can see it has a problem. 
 
As you can see the citizens are hanging heavy. 
The citizens minds are out. 
 
Eros, Eros, in Paris we stayed all night 
in a seraphic cocktail haze 
 
despite the blacked-out theater, 
the shuttered panes. 
 
Tonight we're the most tender of soft targets, 
pulpy with alcohol and all a-sloth. 
 
Monsieur can we get a few more? 
There are unmistakable signs of trouble, 
 
but we have days and days still. 
Let's be giddy, maybe. Time lights a little fire. 
 
We are animal hungry down to our intricate bones. 
O beautiful habits of living, let me dwell on you awhile. 
 

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