young werther

he has a tendency for citylight loneliness
the kind that inhabits an entire day
someone who avoids his own apartment

maybe he should make a film about pointless political rebellion
or one that glorifies sleeping pills

or urban impotence
and unfulfilled urge for owning cleats

that and the professorial repetition of bad art

by the way your nose is museum material, someone mutters
or yells
and he wonders if he still fears child madness
the kind you fear because it may last forever
when twenty is a big number
when male hair on moist, moist boy skin
hurts like bourgeois hunger
           
the truth is, he reveals,
nothing will bear the scarring, path-driving intensity of
being called a faggot for general rejoice

he knew it,
youth is denial of childhood