<span>who could breathe in the city with the</span>
<span>air tight and crowded and the</span>
<span>paperwork piled in the gutters</span>
<span>between stacks of ill-suited</span>
<span>face-painted monkeys</span>
<span>eating each other's grins</span>
<span>as the world turned</span>
<span>slowly to its end</span>
<span>a chestpain that never would</span>
<span>go away till it broke itself</span>
<span>out and cracked the sewers</span>
<span>where they put the poop</span>
<span>they used to fling and smear</span>
<span>on each other and still would</span>
<span>if they hadn't hidden it away</span>
<span>so they could peruse and try</span>
<span>on fancy clothes poop free</span>
<span>so the heiress could move through</span>
<span>the shop window where the masses</span>
<span>had no poop to fling anymore</span>
<span>and still i'm not breathing as</span>
<span>wine flights pass through the bowels</span>
<span>and yet wind still into the</span>
<span>cracked sewers laden with</span>
<span>processed cheese plates</span>
<span>and pâtés</span>
<span>the river of shit</span>
<span>with its floating sachets</span>
<span>like the gondola ride we rode</span>
<span>down canals old enough</span>
<span>to remember the taste of our blood</span>
<span>my mistress is as old as the hills</span>
<span>it's the teeth and eyes that show it</span>
<span>she laughs when she cries</span>
<span>and says "Shit is the realm of the poet."</span>