poem: what isn’t polite but is poetic

there is a strange boy

just across from me

and if the universe was titled the other

direction

the stars would fall drunkenly in our laps

and then drip out of our too-small reach,

their dying tails in my grey sweater and his wrinkled shirts.

i think there is something fundamentally wrong

with this boy

that he has some psychotic dark mental ticking,

a too-tight clock in his head.

anti-social personality disorder?

it is rude to ask, especially with coffee smells hung around us

like christmas lights

but he is always alone.

and i wonder