more than i could

a bunch of the bar
starts really getting
into sinatra’s “my way”
peter sellers looks up
from his magnifying glass
and fixates on this one
guy who’s singing it
into his girlfriend’s half-
averted half-embarrassed
face as she texts a friend—
half here, i think, a licked
sadness and that half
the whole bar up in its
own business, as always,
as if any of the world
that’s not this bar
could give two shits
and so what if it did
anyway—would it be
what it needed to be
would it eat up doubt
and spit it out
like the street outside
going by as taxis
as people looking
for money or ass
and a thing to reassure
them they’re wrong
a thing to reassure
them they deserve
to be punished
forever and ever?