better

It’s just better under palm trees,
the kissing of imported human beings
in imported cars.
The taking of stolen pills
dangerous children give you.
This sleep like ocean waves
coming and coming,

darker and darker
museum lunches.

Seeing a dead body bathed by lawn sprinklers,
you’re not really plotzing.

Your soul is a helium balloon
in this or that movie.

Once, the movies took the place
of stained glass in the churches
with their cattle-shoots of pews
for the poors.
We just stared at the screens
from other worlds
for other worlds,
but that’s getting so old.

What will take the place of movies?

Maybe some form of virtuality,
since everyone is so hungry
to touch everything,

everyone bumptiously
in line,

that carnal psychosis of the internet
that everyone belongs to everyone else

so sick, so now.