Translation

So much has gone to shit. My hair. The state.
The addicts lie on Ellis Street, unfathered.
Reporters scribble synonyms for hate:
the men in blue have billy-clubbed the gathered.

And then, as grisly as an accident,
comes love, what feels like love. Befalls
the best of us, as if the discontent
of days were not enough. I make the calls,

or so I think: Desire, that heretic,
is stealing, spider-fingered, all the hours.
The years. My scorn, acutely politic:
I peck him on the cheek, then hit the showers.

—Soapy, erect, I’ll conjure up a time
when love was just a fecal, furtive crime.