We all know love is not like in the movies

but that doesn't stop a million players
in a million roles from saying their lines
on cue.
Cupid's aim is horrible and his bow bent.
More of a little devil than a little angel.

We know love is not like in the movies.
No serendipity.
No long-lost-reunited flames.
No kiss at the end that means they can be happy now.
No soul mates.

Yet when we watch these films,
we still think that with enough wishing,
we will all feel Cupid's arrow
and the world will be right.

We still feel the piercing blow of jealousy
in our Achilles heel
like when the birthday girl gets
the impractical gift of a pony,
ripe with a fluffy pink bow,
even though years later
the girl will be grown
and have to watch her pony die.

When I watched a documentary on factory workers

in China
I wept
less than three dollars
for fourteen hours
I think of Ginsberg's America
his two-dollars-thirty-seven-cents
this was the girl's bright future
a girl my age
twenty-one this was her
better life
away from the farm her parents keep
with arthritic knuckles
sunrise to set sunrise to
set
they believe
our American dream

I read once that a liter
of diesel fuel
does the work of a thousand
hands
how many now
hang idle
like the stars glittering in the gap
between now and later between
someone else's world
and mine

littering the road
or stepping stones to
salvation