I wish I believed in the soul
I wish I believed in the soul
so that I could talk about it
like a real poet. I would
focus on yours, of course,
since I know yours, oh I do know
that soul-ish thing in you
and I love it, too,
though it is omnivorous
like a dog. Like my dog
Arthur Rimbaud, who will
eat anything from cigarette butts,
apt for the French poet in him,
to pine cones to styrofoam
peanuts, apt for nothing and
surely invented by someone else who
doesn't believe in the soul. Above all
he loves to eat every ketchup and
snot-slicked napkin crumpled and
dropped to be stomped on the streets
of New York. He leaps to their gray
with spritely joy and a private furtive
glance he can never share
with me because he already senses
though he's only a puppy
that I do not understand.
