Futures III

This body is built for regret, 

built to disappoint.

Drinking in light, sweat,

vodka, heroin, hate, confusion,

ownership.

What is poured out in 

compensation 

is wasted, unremarked,

unappreciated, 

a commodity.

And when two

     or more

bodies are thrown together

for whatever purpose,

can they do else but

disappoint the other?

Or is there some small victory

in being distracted from the

mess you have made of yourself

by the mess another has made 

of themselves?

Hollow victories are victories no less.

The degree of one another's 

disgust is the gauge of our existences.

It is possible to follow a map of scars

to a point of forgetting, 

but not back again, at least 

not easily. 

     Once when I was a boy, 

     I stood knee deep in the Pacific Ocean

     and wished it to drag me under

     to carry me away to Japan or

     the Aleutian Islands. 

     Someplace where I was unknown

     and unknowable, a strange

     faraway boy

          with his first scar

          and his commodity

               just beginning.