Socrates! Which Ancient Trade Do You Practice in This Town?

What healing do they put on

with their high heels that eel

their way through the town

owned only by the poets

 

who, they say, might

be safely dead by now

or haven’t been born yet?

Public safety prose

 

of the late market society

with so much ordnance

always ready to explode

does mind a declaration

 

of any verse or line

or any migrant soul

not injected or infected

with a decent penchant

 

to sell one’s disease, drug,

dying or life or oneself

or anyone else for

that matter and to buy

 

in turn one’s own

officially approved

temporary way—

(non)being on this earth.

 

In number they believe.

In numbers ever growing.

For number is with God.

Even though nearly any dog

 

or a random bitch, always

a bit of the Athenian Cynic,

can easily be convicted

of having a heart much bigger

 

than such a God or number

with their dead or unseen hand,

as invisible as their heart.

And yet—it is good to be

 

one on one with that other

beauty that wouldn’t trade you

and that wouldn’t even sell,

for love like the soul

 

either is or isn’t.

And so with one another

you are getting drunk

and when she puts you

 

on herself as a rhythm

or as a rhyming line,

she does it with a smile

and grace that, on the outside,

 

could pass as a public offense

to all God’s good old despots

and their pious slaves and concubines,

while her beauty untaxed fills this cup.