And when we devour our fantasies,
love interests of reality will turn to misery:
nothing lovely will exists again,
nor any news worthy items upon CNN.

And we detach ourselves from all conversation,
listen to no new information:
brains will meld into unfathomable canyons
with sulphur red walls, fossils for companions.

But with elbows akin to mine,
(wrinkled and creased sheathes of skin)
our dance will be passionate and fine,
one more smile, another grin.

Chicago, where the rails become streets,
where the wind winds around corners to double tier trains that rain down with thunder below
cloudbursts of snow and slow traffic

Chicago, where cars and trucks stop at lights on the bridges, resting wheels on wet tarmac and men pass by wearing cagoules and flat caps: bohemian grandparents on northern fronts.

Chicago, where every building is a flat iron or a pencil windowed and widowed of safety net architecture,I look up from the window and flutter as she does, the suicide shipwreck standing atop a roof looking up and falling down, into river and rail track wakes.


If the dial-up allows it and this note finds its way through the orchestra, let me tell you this:

*You look lovely in your flower tattooed white dress.
I shall write about  you until you read about yourself and smile, the rest has
been thrown into the wind and has come to settle in the tidal flow, sit tight and see where it goes.

It's too cold to sweat
and I'm only cycling for a reason to be tired,
to be warm later on by the radiator fire,
to escape mad house choirs
that sing no song of comfort.

Time away from time
is how the modern stay young,
ski run routes that lead around towns
and back again through the Daily Mail nowhere-snow
that never came nor will ever come.

Decorum is corrupt, decorum is dead, the books we told were good
            have all been read.
Fitzgerald has been bled dry by institutions, teachers and those guys in
            red chrome cardigans.
Those Pennine walks have turned to drunken talks in the eaves of the night,
            high above conscious thought and the cold glow candle light
The long haul flights back to the heavenly sight of tyre black
            tarmac have become tedious meditations;
though those lamentations still exist within my wrists,
            a yearning for your riverside kiss.
Bus journeys along roads and routes I already knew are
            changing without consultation,
it’s temporary probation, an experimentation, a test
            of time well spent.
Time well spent in ground floor, high rent, properties,
            fading away into a slack attitude disease.
Needles and fluid, *** and Cupid won’t lift you from this
            perpetual stall,
nor will anything at all; though maybe plans scribbled down on
            napkin edge corners will.
With thought, white paper vertices can quickly become
            mountain range peaks.
Throw politeness out of your transport’s window
            and become a widow to the road,
black veil eyes, cold and grainy, lost in your endeavour
            to find somewhere new to feel safe and clever.
Take those books that you thought were good to tear
            into the new prose of the year.
Rip title pages and dedication pages and index pages
            from the spine
and throw them in the air
            to make a new line of literature and pain.
Take also your pencils and strip them of
            their back bone lead
and shave them into clean kindling for fire start
            shavings for a warmer lonely camp bed.
It’s there and then, in your fake polyester,
            four season sleeping bag womb
that’ll you’ll experience the darkened tomb
            of unbound freedom.
But like paragraphs of small print found in the back of the squint-again-magazines,
            freedom comes at a price, as if long hair and lice or poverty and bedroom escapade vice.

Desert wasteland duvet cover expanse,
light filled from the open curtain above.

Desert wasteland bedroom floor dunes,
filled with clothes from the night before.

Desert wasteland wardrobe cave,
emptied in an attempt to look good.

Desert wasteland kitchen cupboard,
void of food and healthy sustenance.

Desert wasteland cup of tea,
reminding me of home, not of my degree.

Desert wasteland life,
make a to-do list and get on with it.

For the Disney print princess
who knows what she's about,
who finds fascinating worlds within dust cover jackets,
who sends smiles in parenthesis; lost love brackets
over classroom mid-drifts,
a bare silence interrupted by pure kindness;
for who walks in noise behind inaudible
commuters from this station to that station
all the way home and back out again on her family vacation,
who can match and pair t-shirts and jeans with
bowler hat crowns from the palace of queens,
who, for all we know, could eat with elbows on tables
and read not prose, but short fiction fables,
who wouldn’t hold doors open or say thank you
to bus men and their drivers,
who might smoke away her pay
with great plumes almost every day,

who might not be the girl I thought she was.

World traveller.
Suit wearer.
Likes The Shawshank Redemption.

He's off to a singles party
somewhere in Doncaster,
it’s Christmas themed
and fancy dress
though it’s
planned for October the 23rd
during Christmas's only rest.

And I know that in Donny
you find love where you can,
and I know he spent hours
revising his master plan fancy dress idea,
but a raw turkey outfit, coloured
like **** semolina once bought
for a Jamie recipe that didn’t quite work,
won’t cut it on the dance floor.

she lent over the bed rail,
wooden and put together by her husband.

without the book she recited the tale,
word perfect and rehearsed and she quickened

with the story, picking up the pace
to the bit where she placed her engagement ring upon my face,

the nose to be precise, and it smelt
of every perfume kiosk in every shopping hall and mall.

the ***** cat said to the owl, in the sequel to the story-
and for another bedtime completely-

'you're the cherry on the tree, un-pick-able
by hand or bird, stay with me please,
I heard marriage doesn't last forever'

Make the shelter yourself,
source firewood from feet away
and filter the water the way you want it filtered.

Take nothing from the word of mouth
or 'I've got a tip mate' people,
cos they'll be the wake that tips the boat.

**** email systems that connect us,
the metro transport subway buses,
the happy involved, affair ridden couples,
forget them, leave those suppressed thoughts in
and carry on your day the way you began.

It’s a forever New York out there,
with high rise chimney tops
and siren's scare
that wakes the birds from their sleep.

It’s a endless Chicago beyond the roofs,
bitter and fierce;
wrap up warm let not
the ice penetrate and pierce.

It’s a waiting Washington way over there,
where the ***** tubes of the
Potomac, Anacostia meet and kiss.

It’s my land where every day
is a day out.
No one holding you back
telling you that you can’t walk about.

White maze for the middle classes,
collect your museum passes at the door,
please
continue through into exhibitions,
photo pictures of art you won’t remember the name of
but because you’re educated you’ll hope to retain its
name, medium, date and frame size of,
and equate them with those pieces you Googled before you came.

Through the double doors
her cries walked down the corridors
whilst cradled in his hands, cradled carefully,
he stood upright in boots on the
newly polished granite, shipped-in, floor.

The art gallery Father and Daughter
are the hidden display
only found in writing in the pamphlet
for today. Some will see them
through cuts in the door,
others may hear them but assume
it’s ambient art-gallery-played-through-speakers
sound coming from the back room.

Every word's a path,
each sentence a tree
and all attached to a stump of a woman
thin at the base then growing in circles,
until age is defined by height,
her illness by weight.

How can the wood of trench walls
look so lucid, perspex branches
contorting into string in the wind,
knotting air into eddies keeping them
floating right there?

Last night I danced like my dad
with a girl who resembled a dictionary definition
I read not long back-
charming.

Graceful eyes that could
stop traffic with a blink,
and engaging lips that
would smile to sooth the pain of
the midday, gotta-get-back-home-now,
commuters whom step
on pedals with haste.

I lied. My dad can’t dance, so last
night I made a fool of myself
in front of a girl who resembled
a dictionary definition I read not
long back.

I did not kiss anybody last night,
yet my body-
from the lips down-
thinks I did.

Clad in a cotton armour,
like a pitch again tent
in a miserable northern monsoon;
the chest is protected from the disappointment,
the ribs are protected from the disappointment,
as for the heart, that’s the one that gets drenched
in drops of distress-
for it is the one ***** that gets played
by the hand of the female chess player;
knowing and knowledgeable, out to get
your king for only profitable stings
and club-night-pictures-check-the-website-for-more-details,
kisses.

Scribbled in a pre-*** haste
of hormones and awful
music taste,
your name on the back of a receipt
is no way to treat
a one night stand
that you met at the bar;
held hands with in the street;
and subsequently left when
the night became light and neat,
tidied up in a 10am alarm clock
call.

Could’ve waited until
we were both awake,
that way the alcohol would’ve warn off
and we could take this major issue
for what it was-
excitement;
and much anticipation; and placing into
action every lesson learnt from Nick Hornby books,
or pieces of information tucked
deep within our internet bookmark lists.

At least stay until after
Desert Island Discs
next time,
because then buses shall be running
on time, and you won’t have to risk
the public transport roulette table
that spins around this town,
this great noun in the Anglia east.

Now it's the news, and the news
is you've gone.  For a moment
I slipped back into a sleepy cement,
making for rough fingers-
that last night made the ascent
up to warmer climates.

And now back to lonelier nights
and Nick Hornby books,
afternoon wake-up calls
from Mum, back home,
asking how to download
the latest Google Chrome.

No one feels more alone when feeling alone in another darkened hometown.*

He went and wandered,
kerb crawled and begged,
asked for four quid
then left when he got it, though
two pounds less than he wanted;
away, away, away, away, away,
away he’ll go again,
vagabond turned drifter,
God talking, kneel praying, church attending, Amen.

When the already sirens
start up, wind up,
swing around merrily in their
egg shell cups upon and above
the panda-car-cop,
he’ll wake to wander again
until the day his body flails
and gives in, drops to the floor
in a melodramatic stop.

For this forever New York,
with its high rise chimney tops
and siren's scare,
is no place to sleep without
a home to go home too.

Under the eaves we’ll be dryer,
sat down in those chairs so not to tire;
there’s a fire in the back slowly smouldering.
            It reminds me of your desire last Spring.

Below the light we’ll embrace once more
beneath the bed sheets that pour over us like tides offshore,
but you were different with your Trojan war, Iliad heart.
            The snow has fallen, outside is the core and we’re now apart.


Inside the cabin we’ll be warmer
laying loose on the couch like lost foreigners:
you used to be a charmer back when it mattered.
            Now the ground is firmer and the leaves are scattered.

New faces look through
glass, forlorn features pressed
against the panes figuring
out where this all came from.

Long gone lineage, here in this
hall, is now a pressed image
collected by a flower picker’s hand,
gloved to protect the rust and frozen
within two sheets of glass far taller than
any Yorkshire lass, here somewhere secret.

Old faces gaze at another frame
filled with someone else’s misery,
it’s pinned to another wall next to the
menu for the restaurant down the hall, first left on the second right.

Short queues form under hanging light bulbs,
it’s this month’s exhibition, the Pharaoh’s jewels,
on display all the way from the splayed deserts
of Egypt, but some given by a museum in Manchester
so it looks like there is more than there is.

You don't know what you want
nor know what you'll become;
but in the years that'll drum on
you won't know what you'll have
before it's upped and gone.

Let palms and backs of hands
burn with pain, the wound of the twine.
Keep your kite from landing within the lambs,
break you back, but not your spine.

For your ambition is an anchor
in the deepest of seas;
it'll reel on down through the
breeze, past the knees,
collecting and acclimatising,
running towards your needs.

But only are they realised
when you're down on your luck
struggling to breathe.
No longer are you dynamic and living,
but a soul sat down
quietly remembering.

So keep your kite close
to your heart
and that anchor in the sea,
for no one knows what you'll become,
nor where you'll end up and leave.

Hello chimneypots and aerials,
the birds sitting on the rooftops,
window ledge, hello to you too
and to the flower *** that sits atop you-
hello.

You don’t have to wait
in line behind the boys in the band,
just to kiss that one girl’s hand.
Birds, you know nothing of the
subtleties of the relationship. Our
legs can’t fly in like yours, swoop
a female off her feet to
reside in your nest for one night.
How we have to learn the ways
of the woman, find out their likes and dislikes,
what flowers they enjoy and not hate.
Aerials, you’re strong willed and
stay tall in all weathers. All that channels
through you are the fake love affairs
that show up on pixelated squares.
Chimneypots, how I want to be you-
to smoke all day and still last a lifetime.
I’d be around for a century or two
and see suns, skies and moons
both come and go-
get destroyed by man
and his Average Joe.

Post Office:
Telegrams and Telephones

Tell me how the snow is where you are.

Traffic cones outside, must-be-done road works completed by no one nowhere men,
patched up walls clad in grit painted cream
shutters the same, shutting out the screams.

Graffiti bridges, restaurants on ridges-
river's rising fast, finish your entrée
let's leave.

Walk linking arms looking upon                                    
glimpses of brick, of an old home,
lived in years ago by someone unknown.

A rock around her neck
for a star sign birth:
another necklace bought by
another sandal-sock boyfriend.
Time for a new piece
of jewellery, don't you think?
One that’s classy, studded, anything but pink.
It might hang loosely lapping up
the line of air,
that will linger past you when walking to
train station, work station, another day
of painted creation.

Keep the brushes close
and the oils closer,
canvas in the post, ready for closure.
You’re the score and the baton, the lines of manuscript,
my composer.

I didn’t see the moss at the foot of the white-clad border walls
because I was holding you by the edges,
so to not crease, rip or crinkle you.

The road is always long, but this street
takes the ****. The same trees grow and repeat,
twisting up into great nothings acting as a canopy,
but not quite pulling it off as the rain broke through.

You looked comfortless in my arms, as though you’d
rather be somewhere different in a lot less clothing, and asleep
waking to a familiar ceiling nearer to the weekend than this weekday
in May.

Sometimes, if the wind is right and ushered correctly,
the crane lights of the night highlight that moss
and only those searching will be aware that
it lives at the bottom of a white-clad border wall
just over there.

Grab a coach home heroes,
sit amongst the somewhere men,
the here and there women
and the growing up fast kids,
with lantern phones, magic tones.

Everyone here is going somewhere,
winter’s bare
and home awaits.

Fantastic lips and red sense in style,
a lady reclines in front.
She texted Rhys, lengthy in characters,
whilst the plot remained precise.
‘I have to agree with you, let’s take it slow’
fantastic fingers itched her fringe.
Was she confused about love
and its rules and regs,
or was he a staller,
‘the old car won’t start again’ kinda feller?

There are no heroes on this coach tonight,
we’re Sheffield bound and
all without a fight.

Grab your Kerouac coat,
get on the road and
find everything you lost about yourself,
reclaim it from city street code.

Dust travels with the wind
when the wind is hesitant to go alone.
Along with the clouds that
cover the sky, cover the unknown.

Cars with driver and passengers
flee the mounting mess,
the debris of souls, money,
cash around the necks-

Choking on greed and new sofas,
deep porcelain baths, chunks of
meat: expensive, not kosher.

So grab that Kerouac coat
and get on the road.
Find something worth doing, before dusk becomes sweet-taste cold

They lowered him on string,
his face unshaved and the coffin unhinged,
nothing broke his fall but a green cloth dressed in
storage-cupboard-fluff,
the first death of the second month.

Around him they said silent words, empty sentences
stretching the length of derelict paragraphs: morbid monologues
for the man who used words to **** up women
and tell them they were beautiful without them ever seeing it,
understanding it,
knowing if he was legit or not.

Skyward glints,
another hint from another sun,
London runs down,
daily commute over and out.

And how the weekday work is
coming to an end,
but what do they work on whilst 5 in the evening?
Spreadsheets saved in significant folders,
word documents in for a week on Monday,
presentation notes to be written, rehearsed, re-wrote and printed?

‘Beds, beds, beds,
prime town centre property To Let’
Broken brick buildings sit, they belong
to internet auction sites and in estate agent windows.
There’s no flow in this town no more.
Whatever river of commerce that once ran through here
has moved onto, and into, another course,
oxbow lake suburb by Government force.

It rains in the North.
Jewels in the tarmac,
rings in the walls,
stars behind the factory noise,
sound hidden behind an all-car-call.

My broken skin, my broken hide,
months of thought, a hunger for home.
Far flung, further thrown,
back to the up-north-hometown,
hometown of the known.

Queue for a dance with
ink upon your wrist,
paper wrapped tight and
a waiting kiss.
Princes march to their kingdom come, on
their checkerboard, light board,
dance floor hum.
Princesses in timely masks
of nightmarish dreams
hide their real selves in
plain sight, with
handlebar hair
cut into wigs,
only hiding scalps of shame.

In head, in thought, I spoke 26 words,
7 points of punctuation and 6
saintly verbs:
*You left.
a dance too short,
touch of the ***,
another ***** for the group,
feel of the ***,
smile and forget,
forget she ever asked.

She said she liked her coffee cold and dark
like the seas separating her bed and Denmark:

harsh and bitter and brown in the largest
cup we own, so when drinking it
your nose would drown
into an abyss of cheap-coffee-granule-
buy-one-get-one-free ****;

and delivered with it upon the stolen tray,
taken from that shop's Kitchen Must Haves display,
was a plate with two triangles of lightly toasted
toast laid out like the ankles of my late Grandma
(but we weren't together then so, to you,
it just looked like some toast arranged nicely on a plate for us two);

also on the stolen tray from that shop's Kitchen Must Haves display,
was a lovely array of cut of up fruit arranged liked
canapés at every cheap-wedding-buffet:
grapes cut into unfathomable shapes
and slices of kiwi our fingers could never negotiate
and avocado which was there just to cure invisible
weight gain and bad morning breath,
but that's what Google told me so
I can't take it as a guarantee;

and in all of this I was apparently making a fool of myself
because serving you a delicious breakfast
to the sound of Frank Sinatra's Moon River
is not what we discussed, ever- even last night or last week,
in fact, we never talked about this horrendously
unique breakfast.

Happy Anniversary.

Which do you prefer, Haunted Girl-
the city street sidewalk churned
up by heel and brogue
or,
the sweet-talk waves of home?

Settle in the sand while fingers
meld and touch the palms of hands,
let the hour glass beach pass
time between our toes,
have an appetite for shallow
dives amongst wave-tip whites;
whipped up by swell’s whisk,
stare until we sing for the dead men,
fire flares of affection in the form of kisses!
use a tool to sketch our future floor plan,
comment upon the Moroccan oil hair tan,
watch that man trace the coast of France upon his wife’s thigh;
hear her cry as he reaches Cherbourg,
talk of Vienna flagship stores:
forerunner fashion you make look lace,
mention the trees and the shipwrecks,
past relationship breakups and upcoming commitments,
describe, in detail, what you hope to happen
and what happens to that hope.

Fly back home.

9/11 happened,
so I turned to friend
and shook.
Year 5 boys won't understand
the chaos of planes and buildings,
together in a perpetual meld
of iron, and fuselage weld.
Help note snow turned September to December,
within a million pens to paper.

People fell.
Hearts sunk.
Raised hell
in New York's cold front.
Bowery, Bleeker, Church & Liberty
all shook to one man's thought:
dreary and undefended, destroyed in the heart.

she'll walk off
and you'll walk behind,
you feel like a man
and see everything in soft focus exposure
and her walking ahead, timid and feeling triumphant.
this was your first kiss
and not your last kiss
but your most important kiss;
the foundation kiss,
the scaffold kiss,
cathedral columns holding up the whispering gallery of this kiss.

or did you walk off
and she walked behind,
did she feel like a woman,
soft, warm, and kind seeing everything is a hard focus exposure?
that was her second kiss,
not her last kiss
and not her most important kiss;
it was a mill stone kiss,
a grist lipped ground-down-again kiss,
a motel-hotel-roadside chapel of cheap kisses kiss.

a poem for the presumed dead, French Hostage, Denis Allex*

An unmapped forest
grew upon chin
and cheek;
3 years in the making,
the no shaving,
helped to grow by
his tears from his crying.

Orange, orange,
orange again jumpsuit,
prisoner in the arms
of those whom shoot-
not to wound, but fire
with the intent to surround
and then to
close in
to cap a bullet for the ****.

Fire flares into the night
so phosphorous full
stops hail down, and on
the floor in front of the believers,
a paragraph shall form, with perfectly
placed punctuation;
detailing and listing
why they plucked this man
from a French farmhouse village,
and let him grow young,
in fear,
in this far, middle eastern haven.

Dear warmth,

May you rub your back against my shoulder
‘til the windows mist with condensation,
and we fall back into youth, hiding
away from the older.

May your temperature, rising to the point
of red cheek puncture, provide an oasis
under the sand of duvet’s cover.

May your hair whip around like every
flame I’ve ever seen, no agenda or judgement,
just sheer ecstasy and  excitement.

May you conjure up that lone shower feeling,
that one where for a brief slot in time everything
you know and have become floats away through
that extractor fan, out into the air- climbing higher.

May you provide that gasp of heat that
hits the cook in the face, after opening the oven’s
gate in hunger and haste.

May you be that holiday sun I always seek.

May you be the metal womb of  a car when
outside in the myriad hospital world
where it’s cold.

May you be humorous and humid and
totally lovely to be with.

May you be a heated conversation and argument
and disagreement, that torment of words
I need to hear.

May you be my laugh that bubbles up
from the volcano underneath.

May you be the heat caused by key
and lock, that one that stops
others from coming in and making
for ruin.

May you be that first sip of  ‘the
most civilised thing in the world’, as
Hemmingway put it, and let it ignite
a dance below.

May you not judge the mixture
of my grape and grain, and my love
for walking in the rain and my waiting for
ex-girlfriends every time they call.

May you always let me bed down
in that manger in the snug, though
Steve doesn’t know I borrowed his
blanket rug.

May you forever toast that bread
at midnight, just before bed.

Yours faithfully,
The Cold.

The car showroom warehouse unit has turned into a gym overnight.
Low lit lights
highlight the out-of-work-early
joggers and the two step, bought-a-new-ipod-for-this-run, sweaty runners.

Framed central in the glass,
they bounce on mountain passes
over Swiss clear rivers and
around back through
obscure European cities,
all whilst on the spot listening
to Radio 4 podcasts from the week before.

Low cut tops offer no support for the weary
and the lifting gloves of the man
at the back are fingerless and ripped,
unlike his overweight torso, though
his BMW makes him believe that
this warehouse unit on the outskirts of
Huddersfield is the Venice beach of the North.

Half cut teens dressed in high street dreams
stand and survey the beach,
combing it for male shells, to clarify:
guys who think crucifix tattoos on their lower leg will save them from hell.

A mother whose job it is to look after surfboard and parasol,
yes you the mother looking my way,
you should ditch the marriage and get on the road,
hug the coast with tire squeals,
hug men with body sacrificing screams in
cheap French roadside hotels that don’t clean their bathrooms that well.

Girlfriend left to sit the sun out whilst boyfriend joins husbands in the surf,
reads but really she’s breathing,
passing the hours and folding over page corners,
don’t let him see that you don’t love him.

Tablet kids who watch the sea on screen, in apps,
when behind them is a torrent of live data swells and boils
causing swimmers to tumble and coil up close to the sea bed,
some parents, increasingly the same,
forgetting why they came to the coast in the first place.

Filaments fixed on your eyes all night
and the possibility of a chance, of an opportunity,
that I’ll be able to talk to you,
because the club lights are blue
stretched like animal hide across your own hide:
complexion clear cheeks still rouged
though tidal club glow is still blue.

It’s pathetic, worse than any diabetic
with their HumaPen Memoir insulin
length of pen, recording the time
and date
and precise amount of pain
they inject from the last 16 doses.

My pen is my keyboard and records
miserable times
and forgotten dates in cafes
and precise amounts of pain,
though this diabetic is a pathetic poet
and he knows it.

I sit and try and be a lotus
after killing the third fly of the evening
with a pocket book of recipes and a
thirty centimetre ruler stolen
from bathroom **** measuring contests to our knees.

Young professionals tread these boards
and I watch, trying to paint them lotus.

I listen and learn like I was told to do
then clock watch, mop, cycle home to you;
I am still trying to be a lotus
even in wet shoes and no socks.

With less than five-hundred pounds to my various names,
an office-chair-***-clothes-horse, eight USB charging ports
and a future that stretches to Sunday’s last reluctant second,
I am sitting, trying to be lotus figuring out the professional path
David Attenborough heard in his gentleman’s class: that son of a-

- I walked into an army recruitment vault with dreams of being Gulliver,
though was asked to leave out the cat flap cathedral door back into war
as they’d got their laugh and didn’t applaud.

Perhaps I should’ve been better at maths
where apparently a career can be predicted on a scatter graph,
and the pigeons of today were the pigeons of next year and the months that’ll follow the century after that.

I am still trying to figure out the hoo-ha of *******
and ring fingers and collar sizes and the inner circles
of hyenas when the winter solstice splits the seasons.

There is no reason for this lotus procrastination
when what’s there to live for but a crooked world
and one bandage left.

Ideas are darkened figures,
built upon pigments and ideas.
They can whip through gallery doors,
the canteen,
across mezzanine floors.

Ideas are hotel love affairs,
with their take away trays;
they’ll check up on you
every once in awhile,
with a phone call diverted from
the Hotel Lobby’s, binary file.

Ideas are those ghosts of girls,
pale skinned beauties that’ll pass you
in the street,
only to unfurl at the feet
of some other man
as a fireside treat.

Too many frown lines to be certain
whether or not those lips
are worth a kiss.
Face paint cracks,
middle school onion skin effect,
on pale forehead hide, that
covers bare bone and brain.
Costume falls down at the shoulders,
waist and shin, only to reveal
more paint, Picasso paint,
blue and rose, cubist painted prose.
Your dance is little more than
a jig, left foot to right foot, Newton’s Cradle-
strings attached.