when I write this (2001)

when I write this you are sleeping or talking or both
and while I write this you are planning your future.
perhaps your ink is more effective than mine.

because here I lay upon fabrics of the bourgeois
candles of the religious
and scents of unknown essences
thinking of you.

and still while I write someone dies
as I finish my thought.
in the few seconds before pen meets paper
and my self-indulgence,
another woman is raped.

but still I write in vanity longing to
understand rather than know
how to stop thinking of you only.

when I write this you are sleeping or talking or both.
yet here I betray the world when I think of you.