he had the pinkest gums i'd ever seen. 

while we walked with our little frightened girl legs to 11th street wishing this was hookey.

one of them was very fat and they joked about the effects of the medication on their bowel movements. 

none of it was glamorous,

and all of it was loud.

we tried to keep the odor from our nostrils, pervading and comingling windex and terrible luck.

and we kept our mouths hard and shut as we rode the elevator to the fifth floor,

because our saliva was unnaturally hot and would probably turn red

if it was exposed to any kind of air. 

lots of things oozed and three of them had canes.

and they had friendly eyes as we sat in the plastic chairs, jaws that were withering, or would wither on friday. 

Optimism

we are good. 

we ignore the screams of children and the mentally ill the same way we butter our toast-

systematically.

our eyes and the streetlights become the same.

all moist orange, all weird silence.

malleable men move, each one in time with the rest.

all magnanimous at first instinct.

the screams though, push it back. 

we are good.

everything, all things, make(s) us bad.

we are good when we are puffy and clean, sticky and easily hurt-

like white rice. 

soon though, we are the subway's screech or the hand's smack.

we are turgid and slippery as we live more and more.

we become thin and oily like the hairs of a mean old pervert. 

and we like to sneer at misfortune and sniff out kindness to blow our nose in and defile.

we like to defile.

take and eat and imbibe and pluck the hairs of society until we are grossly obese. 

our eyes and the streetlights become the same, stumbling with our nails too long and scratching each other and bleeding and spotting our streets brown.

we are good?