If to care means look closely, then streetscape

here—you tell it—every gaze within the frame

a tangent line in Euclidean space,

not a single gaze intersecting another’s face

(except the one looking across this flattened

plane bent on asking) what in Godot’s name

are we all waiting for?

                        The crowded pause

does not reply, but its bodies do, or seem to.

Hands pocketed, arms crossed, what to

make of the bright white lines

whose oblique lapels & collars sweep

like arrows the civil gaze to inwardly

blank cross-purpose?

                        Unselfconsciousness poses,

unaware perhaps of being viewed,

yet plainly skewed

by the scrutiny of nails, whose shape

suggests no palpable social answer.

Misery walks on certain faces. The body

parses a precise language of anonymity

and rubs against, not quite touching,

                        perhaps about to,

some muted aggregation, a poly-

synthetic future, you and you,

whose determined lack can’t come

quick enough, god help us, in buffed

monochrome, absently milling

history’s streets, hands kept idle

in careful cuffs.