If the car gets stolen we'll buy another
The boy born in Vietnam descends
The stairs to the seediest bar
You curl up like a cat when you sleep

You shouldn't stare at someone while they're sleeping
Says the peevish young woman

A baby born in a Filipino brothel, her father
Canadian, paid without haggling,
She grew up bearing jugs of wine and water, as needed
Bearing bountiful red ripe fruits
The prostitutes let no man touch her
Though she would've landed a fortune in Tahiti
She was given in marriage
To a Chinese fry cook moving to America

I know the story says the American girl,
Her figure ruined with self-indulgence and the modern young man
prepared to stay out until ridiculous hours talking
She is put together from bits of books
That heaved a moment's transportation
Many men who swayed inside her
Left their pieces
She loved theater, watched backstage,
Was apprenticed at too young an age,
Before she could stand or walk on stage.
The director told her:
Your homework means nothing,
Your friendships, your family; Nothing!
There is only Shakespeare

The boy remembers refugee camps
And teenage nights doing smack
Vomiting on the subway track then culinary school,
Losing his virginity in a parked van
With the girl who sat next to him in Algebra.

We are monsters. Our personal myths
Of moments from family and school
Every good play we've seen, every time
We fucked and thought: This is the hour
I am more alive than Faustus ever was!

Let me finish my work, he said,
Which was to make her smile

In this same tavern,
Smoking and wearing blue jeans
His face charred by kitchen grease,
Her figure ruined by babies and knowing such bliss
Their sheets smelled of lust and sweat

There they were, in that dark tavern
Choosing how or when to suffer, or prevail
   Day by day working slowly
Out of the ghetto creates elegant despair

The cup is bottomless, yet
Each deep draught burns a candle
For 1001 nights or a haiku, if that's all that remains,
East and West may as well
Lay down their quills and sleep
The good earth absorbs everything

creamy cocoa butter
spirits and supersugar
thunder spread upon
scent of vanilla
spreading tits and tummy

for the right amount
of fuck and feather
you can grab a handful of flesh,
                       but only accept the richest

                       leave your cage
welcome back from the world of
insects who don't eat breakfast
and oxen that take cabs to the gym

cut the cheese and let
the cabernet breathe
otherwise, muses are
uninspired they do not
after all, encourage
        acts of self-denial
I need the hot, sweet mango
In the back of my throat

if the body be a drum
we'd better play away
so kiss me and let's begin
to fill and soak our empty skins

First our wings are skin and air
You steal kisses in my neck or hair
Later our backs are flesh and leather
My hands are ruined with the work
Now lips become wax and clay, eyes painted on,
The lightning moment frame captures
An episode of surrender
Disgraceful, this fall to earth