‘She Goes Around Collecting Subtitles’

It being better to discover a laundry-chute to paradise
Beside that dumb-waiter you keep at the back of your brain
I tip-toed the Maginot line between the Happy and the Sane
All the while pleading the species on behalf of the Nice.
By which I meant the kissable and which, being everybody
As well as no-one, left too few hearts to hanker after
When no space is apparently not a best bed; so I’ll ask her
Who among us still deserves the right to seem sorry –
With the frames of our profiles doing double-duty as halos –
While we wait in a queue for the Void marinating in grumbles
And the ampersands in cold pursuit keep allowing us to stumble?                           In the red rooms of an anti-Babel you skipped amidst the shallows                         “If you leave yourself you’ll be left behind.” said I in tender jest
“If I’m left behind, I can not be lonely, having you as my idiot guest.”

(April 23, 2015)