dusty oldest fashion-house
all still, peopled with dummies
draped with apprentice-dusters
and stow-away wannabe sequins
obscuring the tide-lines
that snake around the pin-scars
they seem almost human
in their proud arabesques
here midnight comes at around 4am
when the mice safely scuttle
out across the ghostly room
from elegant cracks and crevices
between the noir and gloom
fingers snap impatiently,
on hands of famished clocks
these most stylish little rodents
to tiptoe round the block
they scale the stem and sip
til tiddly from the crystal
acrid wines boasts residue
as ice boasts it can blister
like psychedelic window-screens
to the teensie little sandy tongues
their wafer-thin craniums
do gallantly twitch and compute
the force with which
to bury into the port salut
beneath the sticky flutes
crumbs of crumbs that once worried
divinely narrow hips
now come to flesh and thatch
a trillion hungry villagers
and feed each ravenous hatch
teased twig, snapped and twiddled
lies next to tossed-aside straw
but makes a proper handsome bail
for the hungry little vole
and a bed for all the thin red-eyed
right through from the winter to the fall
while the dummies dream of sleep
draped with yarn that once clothed sheep
from rags to rags n sheet to sheet
always under construction
and sometimes to order
static, pondering on love's gates
where they were promised they would meet.
(c) Dot Allison 2004. All rights reserved.
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