As if aware of death,

nature threw a shroud over things

best forgotten. Like the time,

sunk on Plymouth Gin,

you opened your lungs to the moon

and dashed a tumbler on the rockery.

Or when, with nerves splayed,

you flung some unloved vase

at next-door’s cat; missing,

they said, by a whisker.

Aware only of ourselves,

we arrived with shears and tro...

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Please, do not take my photograph.

It is not the wayward tooth,

or the botched parting in my hair,

or the emphysemic hollow

that makes an empty coat of my chest.

None of these things bothers me.

It’s the old saw we know is untrue yet

cannot deny; in fraudulent smiles

the lens finds truth, the camera does not lie. 

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Groping for change at the meter, I find,

with a frisson of fear, the right

amount - to the penny - amongst the fluff;

detect, in the clever clunk of coins, something

final. You, outside the surgeon's room,

prone in a paper-thin gown; me, wondering where I

stashed my ticket, thinking about buying time.... 

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