to the management | a skinny poem

We rouse in vicious morning
to dress after a suicide,
zippered boots
jeans, t-shirt
pea coat venting, a mosquito
ablaze
on last night's stubble rash
a stew of causal nuisance
nothing too fancy
disarmingly attired,
hobbled from the first
The Watford Gap
a jockey might advance
to put his nag down gently
fuck off,
fuck off and die
in the fashion of dice,
an equestrian ruse
no tie, colours lashed, bruised
a breakfast of losers
a banquet
a bouquet of serrated roses
no thorns
for John or Jane Doe
Dom Perignon over dawn
twin rum babas
No raincoat
famously truncated
let them come out in the wash
We lean on a rod
of our poor back's devising
we would not have it
any other way, we might sooner
not have it at all
for where we dwell in dreams
of self maiming
there we relentlessly pursue.