revised already?

yeah, because that's how we roll around here.

anywho... did some cutting/pasting/rewriting and here's a new version of the just completed section that i posted yesterday or the day before... whenever it was.



bobby’s best friend switches channels like blinking,
looks for himself in crowds, wishes he could find
the remote control for his life so he could skip to a scene
with some action, or sex, or maybe stop the damn thing
and trade it in for another movie about fire.

he stares at an image of a girl on television so hard
a village in the Congo, like this one minus the jeans,
bursts into flame.

he sees his reflection on the screen
settling like an unseen visitor across her lips,
practices the perfect smile: one part hope,
two parts desire and a pocketful of indifference,
then washes the taste of ash from his mouth
and decides this vague longing can’t be love
because it doesn’t hurt enough.