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Cover Girls

I've just mowed down your fresh new crop of faces
with a sickle of hate in the supermarket line.
Who is it made me want
this shiny red gold lipstick tube?
Some pallid palm grasping
unsubstantial coin of fleeting air
cold coin visage
nothing to do with sex love fecundity drive
force river blood life.

What maddening fantasy do you propound
before our haggard eyes without surcease?
Rivers of eyes, all God's,
we are tired of your vision screens,
we are weary of your plastic ethos. . .
My poor heart of paper
seduced time and again by your lies
my knee flexed to the sickness
of hollow deity.

I've seen them in their innocence
in their ignorance, standing in lines
beautiful, false, dead already
marked for the market
tags hanging from lips, teeth, ears,
eyes, gums, feet, knees, breasts;
breasts that give no suck
to the starving world.

Ah, yes . . . ah, yes
Venus came up late
on the horizon tonight
Her sandal straps were loose
her clothes didn't fit her right.

And that ain't the Virgin Mary
cool and blue
on the corner of Penn
and Colfax Avenue.

That, brother,
is your sister
and you
are killing her.