there are so many of them
  and there is only less
  of me —

gondola in Venice,
  H-bomb
and the knife of Bach;
a steady collision in Q. Ave
as the fizz of the afternoon mirage
settles with the ides,
the torn elephants of
  Chiang Mai
the red blood of Golden Gates
   the froth of the repeated wave
at the lip of the ocean,
  city buoys lacerating
the skyscape

and your coming in here
  ransacking all;
appeasements and
  trivialities — there are so many
of your photographs here
  and only less of me,

looking at all of you
  and weeping it
later. sounds like these sounds
hanging by the edge of the bed
reducing woes to a hair-trigger.

i look outside and there
are women, cat-called by peddlers,
stopped by cabs, inside and outside
  of cars with sometimes lovers
hot legs and all that,
simmering in the highway
glancing at them now
   lamenting them later,
what's a dull boy to do in a dull town
  with clothes dull wielding the
     dull word?

meanwhile, there's so many of you
and there is only very scant of me left.
light voyeurs through the interstices
   of the huddled masses,
panic screeches through the maddened
  streets of Vito Cruz.

   the night is all black and stark
and the heavy behemoth of existence
  prods underneath where
rats, rodents and vermin run
  plodding the highway with sleek varmint
    demeanor. a lady passes by with a
string of fragrance dangling upon
  her shoulder-blades.

what's a dull boy got to do in a dull city
  with a dull heart?

there are so many of them for my
   territorial hands cannot name
and there's only one of me:

     unheroic
        impinged
small
        half-drunk and
half-believing

  that there's something
a dull boy ought to do
   in this dull city
with dull words but it comes
   with an exorbitant outlay.

dog-leashes are expensive,
    moonless hoots through opened
windows hefty with price.
   moon-blooms again and again,
missing all hurt trying to repair
   the ravaged — i look at young
girls, old women, fine and complete
  and this thing of being me
     on the market marked: sun-stifled.

there's so many of them
there's only a sum of me
that's often small and burgeoned
bringing the question
  
what's a dull boy to do in a dull city underneath a dull moon
       within a dull crowd?