For one night only


I am hanging up my crocodile shoes
and will not be walking on water again.

Please do not cry.


* * *

Some carrying imitation handbags have expressed dismay at my actions

calling me wasteful.

I rub salt in their eyes

turning their harangues to oceans.

I have mislaid a shoe
and there is one fewer handbag.


* * *

Don’t get me wrong
                                       little man. Thank you for the safe return.
I am all in favour of the environmental thing;
I’m in it after all
                                  for the clean water
and the spruce air; having my cake and eating it

is my other thing.
                                    Lean in close.
Blow out the candles.      That’s right.


* * *

As a result of the above I am increasingly interested in the question of my wisdom as

a concept.      A concept.

Nobody has yet approached me about it.

I shall make the first move:


* * *

finding a wife among the non-compound-words for the sake of decency.

Here is my gambit: I love words.

I feel as if she should invent them and dance on them,

fidgeting down side streets like undone laces.

I see a cat tickling the rim of a rubbish bin and corner her eyes for later.

She maws in painfully.

I consider the carapace of a crow

and am immediately covered in feathers.

This is my kind of trinity.

The kind in which you lose count.

Everything is falling for my two left feet

and I can take my pick


* * *

So I do.      It sits well with cake.
Did I mention it is my birthday again today.      It is your job to do things for me.

Little shoe      I will put you on      and you too little shoe
though you are uncomfortable.
                                                             Let’s go to bed.



and when you wake      cold in the night      walking for the umpteenth time over

in a sweaty dream gasping your tongues for water

i will teach you all about reciprocation