THE SKIN OF THINGS

It should seem odd
to buy and sell flesh
for who can measure love or pain
Yet you can pick up almost anything
for a neat bargain in the city -
quick fixes and hired company
What you don’t bargain for
is the heartache, indigestion
or the hunger shortly after
The price of bloated pleasures
is delivered in installments
long after unwrapping a stranger
You see, there’s nothing casual
about intimacy, or passing
through a temple, without bowing
Bodies are like poems, that way
only a fraction of their power
resides in the skin of things.