You run. Streaks of streamers
flicking like pennants from your past.
Your self-owned punishment smiles
half-amused, half-mastedly back -
chalking three more marks to misery
and one more screeching fingernail
across the board.
There's no denial here, baby.
It was all too good for you to feel.
Even the streamers have lost their wind.
Your need to be
unneeded
claims its victory and pockets its commission.
It sparkles like shopworn sequins
twisted from their threads and dropped
through slatted crates and
could-have bins.

 

30 june 00