I arrive at the barbers
for my weekly, my usual,
and you are there,

sitting in my seat
crying. I lift you up,
cape and all,

take you round the
corner, where you tell
me you are sorry

but we have to go to
Brighton now, even
though it is 6pm on

a Friday and we won’t
be done until 2pm
tomorrow. Is it a ruse?

I think so, because
suddenly we are in a
part of London that

looks like Montmartre
(or it could be Richmond
masquerading as Venice)

and we meet a man
called Tricks who says
he’s the new chief now

because he knows the
location of all the bones.
And then there are

scanners at airports,
walk-in health centres,
families in North Carolina

with names like Kayleigh
and Shauna. And when
we are done meeting

them we are back, you
in the chair, glowing blue
under barbicide lights.

The door went ‘ping’
and you walked in,
making jaws drop,
making hearts pop.

There’s no kernel of doubt
I’d like to take you out.
You’re a butter-kissed delight
and you’ll taste just right.

I’m sweet for you,
I’ll be a treat for you;
and if you’re not salty,
I won’t be faulty.

This is corny – I know that –
But it’ll be worth getting fat.
**** my diet and my waistline;
Let’s cheat death one tub at a time.

Do you think that when first presented with
that enclosed heaven above the Pope,
Michelangelo stopped for a moment,
then maybe a longer one, and still more,
as he attempted to count how many strokes
it would actually take to paint that sky?
How many times his arm would have to
conduct an arc, from down to palette,
back above his head, again and again
and again and again and again. Did he think
about how the brush would stay in his grasp?
The pen is slipping away from me into
horizontal weariness as I write this, contemplate
this one single, un-fluid flow. The autistic part
of me is not going to be happy until it can
at least guess some sort of recognisable
answer to such an insane question. We can
even begin to construct a formula: x strokes
per hour times days times years minus whatever
the assistants did. Haven’t you yet boggled at
the still way-off number this crude estimate
puts out? If I was a girl, I would always demand
a portrait. That’d be a real sign, true effort,
devotion; not just some words scribbled down
on a page while he’s probably thinking of some
other girl he’d like to write a poem about, in which
in which she’s having her picture painted,
her soul pinned.