A COLLECTED POET

You once said
you hated "romanticism"
when the hearse passed
you also despised
zoos,
1990's Gucci loafers,
sweatshirts
with city names,
bus companies
with their runaways
hiding from themselves,
empty shelves
of used bookstores,
boxers who won't quit,
opera singers
who cannot bow correctly
who turn into pop stars
after make overs
at bewitching hours,
Hollywood starlets
who love everyone,
so called religious martyrs
with the same mantras
who would hang you
for a price,
all mother superiors
yentas of androgeny
collecting pennies
down town,
Divine look a likes,
who do not listen
to the boy
at the mirror
somewhere crying
in his mother's
Freudian slippers
the humiliations
from his older brother,
all the feral politicians,
you hated "realism"
once upon a time
that era is not over
it's for those
camera ready,
it's for those uprooted
we live for.