The hollow tinkling tipping tumble of glass on tile
Follows the path of patient feet
Ever slowly out into the open
The cracking hollow creaking of grating joints
Meets the draw tight face
Where smile lines cut like a knife into the cheeks
Rose tinted black lashed blue eyes stare blank ahead
Collapsing china made brittle by claims
To what it is,
What it should be
Say, think and feel

Like a toy shoved between two children
Stretched, banged and reused
The marionette played its silken strings for others
Danced to the same dreaded tune
Around and around that merry chortled phonic dirge  
Eating away at its own strings
Snapping like rotten wire
A puppet no longer
Ill and abused