A man who has never been rejected
is watching women on Highland Street

Looking at women on Highland Street
as if this were ruins in the Yucatan

As if in the ruins of a Mayan city
these women were exhibits to be viewed

Exhibits to be viewed
as if they were souvenirs

A man who has never been rejected
is shopping for a souvenir

among the women of Highland Street
imagining he is a prince of a lost realm

Prince of a lost realm he learned about in school
or perhaps in books from his father’s library

In books from his father’s library
that displayed women as souvenirs

Souvenirs for the taking by princes of the realm
Who imagine the backdrop of old roads and palaces

Ruins and palaces and even temples for men
who have never been rejected

from the Yucatan to Highland Street
never rejected ever at all

because they’ve never asked permission
when they take a woman for a souvenir of the realm

A man watches women
on Highland Street 

Imagines himself a souvenir
carved in obsidian 

Imagines himself as player
in a usefully bent myth

When at last
we’d overthrown 
what we’d let become
a bloated squid feasting
upon our heads,

we reeked so badly
it wasn’t long before 
we swooned, fainted, 
passed into a fog of stench
and fell into sleep

as deep as the one
which had given the squid
its opportunity.  This time,
however, we all held hands
as we dozed, secure

in the knowledge that 
whatever came next,
it would be our very own.  

And it was —
it was our own new squid we woke to,
our own stink weighing us back down.