I want to take off 
               this shirt which is my life, 
               which is on fire 
                                ­Charles Wright 

Put on your best dress, those shoes for dancing, 
and I will rip my shirt just so. We'll be ditzy 
marionettes twitching to the spastic bass line, 
puppets looped by the chest or neck, gazing up 
to the rafters, twisting and twirling again. 

Since the world is soon supposed to end, 
I say let's get on with it, speed and fire, 
I want to be the Haring flash­figure hanging 
on subway walls, the skeleton inside the box, 
keeping time when time no longer matters. 

I met a woman whose ears were cathedrals of metal, 
museums of puncture, gold posts and brassy pendants 
that clanked and angled at the tilt of her head. 
I had an accident, she said, had to remove them all 
for x­rays. Two openings were new, and six hours later 
they had disappeared, closed over. I want to know, 
she said, how many holes a single ear can hold. 

So much for damage we value or inflict. 
It heals before ceremony, before we can pin 
a medal through it, swallows our gesture 
like drum and guitars do the singer's raspy voice, 
before we can test our limits, our loss. 

And here we are again, below night sky, 
gaping like beached fish, and the stars hurl 
their tiny hooks toward our parched hearts. 
Every time, they catch us, and we are left 
taut and dangling. Never are we reeled in, 
never can we free ourselves, nor would we.