Underneath the gluttony
The sex
The lust
The pride of a new man in an old suit
The smooth devil-head insecurity

Underneath
The cleanly speeding windows
And the smear of endless haze
The clang of steel mementos
And the smell of empty graves

The crawl that rises skyward
And the lectures from afar
The critics’ lines recited
And the leering honour guard

The zeal of old fanatics
And the overriding dreams
The seedless rows of plastic
And the ebb of idle green

The glare of red attention
And the murmurs floating past
The glow of dead connection
And the moats of broken glass

The slowly fraying centers
And the half-remembered rhymes
The sighs of grey surrender
And the harsh December shrines

The squiggles by the sidewalks
The crumbling paper caverns
The secrets in the silence
The bedsheets bleak and barren

The quiet and the questions
And the echoes and the exits
And the sobbing and the sessions
And the deference and the debits

The falsehoods and the faithless
The faltering and the faceless
The heathens and the handshakes
The heedless and the heartaches

Underneath the
Buzz of hurried hives and the
Howl of vacant lots and the
Struts of daring drives and the
Droves of slighted cots and the
Lone and muted moans and the
Missing vibrant beams and the
Cold and grasping groans and the
Grieving slandered streams

The chairs all left in tatters
Near soot and grime and rust
The chairs that lie near tables
And slowly gather dust

The faces watching faces
The fingers pointing fingers
The eyes against the eyes
The boots atop the boots
The sounds that swallow souls
The lights that fill the sky
And an old cigar
Begging, planning,
Pleading for the streets to catch aflame

Underneath
There is a pile of bodies
Leaking maggots
Onto unclean ground