Denim Shit

No-one sees the heap of jeans, foul and festering,

bunched in a cramped corner of our highest highway;

the fumes infiltrate our urban swerving -

and we are lurching like lighters in the dregs.

On their buses during dawn, the grimy gimlets gawk

at the greying air, holding their noses; in our offices guises

at the gloaming, the rest of us, the bastards,

roar and rest past the unwashed rank.

Then the businessmen, snorting cash, rot in their suits;

the builders, baked in concrete, erect an edifice

out of their brickly bodies; and the janitors steam

and simmer in the city's denim stink.

The preachers prophesy purgation by baptism - but

the politicians shit themselves in protest, drowning

from the weight of their filth; and the bastards break

into applause and search for a scapegoat.

The garbagemen are crucified upside-down for failing

to forgive our stenches; and all at once they sing:

our father, who art made of sulphur, harrowed be thy

odors, thy suffocation come imminently,

and find our laundry where it lies decomposing.

But the detectives run in circles, tracking dead herrings

down to the docks, where the fishermen, in desperation,

bite their own delicious fishhooks.

Sailors: don't dredge the river - its coins are full of unheard

wishes, washing to the sea; and Artists: don't sweep the streets -

your brooms are putrid and your dustpans are sieves

that leak toxic scents with glee.

The policemen, driven mad by their dogs, barricade the exits

and murder the mayor; the firemen evolve into arsonists, dancing

in powwows 'round the flames; the street surgeons flash scalpels

and rhinectomize the passers-by.

Meanwhile, the mailmen print letters to the president, pleading

in prose for a platoon of perfumers - in crop dusters -

flown by naked fashionistas whose denim clothes, worn once,

crawl onto the highways in shame -

and there they die, surrounded by flies, while the chefs

spice our maggot-filled meat; and the rest of us, the bastards,

wander in circles and wonder why our denim shit

persists in this city of corrupted gods.

-10/2010