Wake

I pull a sinewy black hair
from under my teacup.                       

The sound of thin balloons,
exhaling. Savage
reams of indelicacies curl                                                                       
the edge of her mouth.

Guests arrive on tip-toe,
balletic sympathisers; for hours
they tear apart the duck
& cram fistfuls of crackers.

Our grandmother combs
her lonely whisker; still
famished for love,
misty for a brylcreem tap.

Mia brays, vacuuming madly
like every speck was death.  
You fill a glass with rocks                                                
in the potting shed.

I climb inside my stiff
piano & close the lid.

Octave-Shaped Hole

Opening  night  fever  grips our ears amid  the  panic
of tuning violins. Juliet  is  less convinced: ‘Nobody’s
ever composing me.’  Later, I seem  to recall,  she ate
the trumpeteer’s  lips. Reservedly, a section  of brass
twirl  bowties, picking at  fish & decks of cards.  ‘I've
found  myself  in a  suicidal  funk these past  3 years’
the pianist announces, to his fork. ‘But there’s a firm
regality in Albert’s  oiling of those strings.’  Satisfied,
he dips the neck of  his cello to an imaginary  crowd.

Inside  the dry basement,  Hermione  sips  her  wine
like  a  flautist. Overheard  overtures  in  the  neigh-
bouring  cubicle: ‘I desire  only  ONE  counterpoint:
frugality,  belittling  your  avarice.’  All  too late,  the
coda breaks  into a dazzling heart,  before becoming
muffled,  like  an  emotional  toaster  under  a  damp
cloth. And when the Chinese prodigy cries, ‘because
there will  be no more notes’, we  applaud  painfully,
missing the absence of purity in our tapering review.