The suit in question
Is grey. Pin-striped white.
Double-breasted. Three piece.
Blue tie, grey hatching.
An absolute nightmare to change into.

I drop my jeans
In the monastery stall,
Shed my shoes.
Old friends.
The trousers, slacks,
Rise morning fog
And sleep in the stratus
Of my waist.

I really wonder how
The men of the then
Could have worn them.
So much taller.
So much grander.
So much straighter.

White shirt with
The butterfly tracks,
Make-up stains
From a billion ancestors.
Dead relatives that don’t
Respond to the call.
I take their places
Without a single
Crumb of guilt,
O feel the guilt.
The vest. Easy enough.
Yeast but grey and it
Rises horizontally.
I’ve just noticed pockets
Sewn into maddening teases.
The barest suggestion
Of an opening.
It holds like the bowl of the moon.

The coat. The great monarch.
Organizer with a clipboard
Ensuring the quality
Of a burlesque of silk.
So strange.
So other.
So queer.

In a minute or two, the
Hyperhydrosis.
It really is my only hope
Of describing my true temperature.
I will ignite in a biological
Soliloquy that can
Pronounce all those tricky
Thoughts I’ve given up
For the stage.
Gentle gravity,
Cruel crushing backhand.
Burst my complexion,
Steal my aqueous words.

Again, this suit.
How many Lomans,
Bankers, adjudicators,
Businessmen and Babbits
Have lived out their deaths
In you?
Brave rain cloud,
Where is your lining?
I feel the quip swelling
And project it to the back wall:

Only the costume knows true reincarnation.