Some Cities Are Like Men
Hopelessly prayer-bound in their mosque of self-loathing, miserable
in their happiness, some cities are like men. Centuries of toxic relationships
with conquerors and noncommittal populations, their walls are cracked
and their doors creak still
Hopelessly prayer-bound in their mosque of self-loathing, miserable
in their happiness, some cities are like men
The splintered nightmares of bomb debris and earsplitting bullets,
of human blood, and human rage — do they not quiver the insecure certitude of their plastered walls like the trust of careworn men. And what of
their emaciated telephone poles — do they not wear the hodgepodge
of electrical wires like disheveled hair — messing them up more
with the rustle of a silent breeze
to repulse a browsing lover.
Hopelessly prayer-bound in their mosque of self-loathing, miserable
in their happiness, some cities are like men
Feeling comfort
in the rat populations breeding in their dark gutters
than in the afternoon sun that flashes
the grey ugliness of their rust-infested windows
the yellow piss stains on their naked floors
Hopelessly prayer-bound in their mosque of self-loathing, miserable
in their happiness, some cities are like men. And some men
are like despairing lovers, bound even when
their graffiti and paint, garden pots and earrings of wired lights
are washed and electrocuted — rejected with a scraping erosion.
But even in their brutal dismissiveness, some cities are like men. They don’t
collapse the narrow ledges of their roofs, and plop them to suicide — because
they are still wanted even by the ones they do not want
hopelessly prayer-bound in their mosque of self-loathing, miserable
in their happiness.
