I undress the emperor with my eyes
Looking, I pry open the cracks in Babylon’s disguise
My mind has been prodded and pleaded and prized
by cities whose souls got advertised,
but they can’t size me up
now that I drink down the “drink me” potion
(which can’t be sold – its old-soul essence works deeper wonders than skin lotion
–its mind-bending, kind, mending magic quiets commodity commotion)
I drink till I shrink till I sink
to the smothered pores of the great greedy Whore
where the blood of the Beast is dying to breathe
the air she denies but so desperately needs
(well, she has a prescription for a needle injection of what she thinks is nutrition
–so she’s left off breathing of her own volition)
Now that I’m tiny I tickle her grimy dead skin cells
till laughter swells like steam from hell,
till the friction of free, moving diction strokes out the choke
that’s kept her keeping us from going beyond skin-deep
So I’m vision-fasting from ads, petty politics, and other fads
and instead am on a steady diet of faces and other traces
of life amidst the mirages of the commercial desert;
this takes discipline, conviction, and love of strangers,
and even with these, the capitalist dangers capture
whether I like it or not… unless…
I look straight down at cracks in the street
or at my feet – which is not a bad way to know where I stand
