Street Moths

by X.J. Kennedy

Mature enough to smoke but not to drink,

Grown boys at night before the games arcade

Wearing tattoos that wash off in the sink

Accelerate vain efforts to get laid.

Parading in formation past them, short

Skirts and tight jeans pretending not to see

This pack of starving wolves who pay them court

Turn noses up at cries of agony –

Baby, let's do it! Each suggestion falls

Dead to the gutter to be swept aside

Like some presumptuous bug that hits brick walls,

Rating a mere Get lost and death-ray eyes.

Still, they keep launching blundering campaigns,

Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight:

Blind moths against the wires of window screens.

Anything. Anything for a fix of light.