STREAM WITH PIRANHAS

There is a severed head taped to the t-shirt display
and a certain bitterness to my second cup of coffee
as I realize I have spent the last, oblivious fifteen minutes
ogling the prominent breasts of the barman's girlfriend.

They are burying the Muslim dead in Iraq
with their heads pointing toward Mecca;
mine will have to point towards the men's room
I guess.

Somebody quoted to me once a study
that concluded the most violent place on earth
is right behind the left forelobe of the human brain,
where reality and fantasy careen into each other with the murderous intensity of bullets and bad ideas.

JD Frey--November 10, 2003