Does The World?

 

Does The World?

 

I once thought if I closed my eyes,

the world would disappear –

cease to be like it was just memory

but I didn’t tell, in case it was true –

like how can you know

that your blue is his blue

if blue is the colour?

 

That was when I cared about you

or such stuff as dreams are – you know –

but now – on leaving home of a morning,

catch the bus -

I wonder if all that fuss

she makes is apropos of something,

or something of nothing

and maybe if she stops, the world does too.

 

Scraped back her oven-bun hair

and running to fat -

perhaps - but careful, cancel – puckered lips

blow goldfish bubbles

or like a red snapper snaps air

pitched medium to high –

a ball toss the batsman misses –

she’s forever blowing kisses,

pretty kisses on eclairs.

 

Sometimes words are chucked

casual, forwards, backwards,

over the shoulder for luck

as a pinch of salt

on the last chops in the chiller,

handled, thumbed, pressed to the back

where all the unlucky flies get trapped.

 

From first to last verse

it’s prattled and pursed,

an endless bargain bin flutter of fascinators –

words to erode riverbeds

fashioned from basalt ballast

she’s a bedload of corrasion

for every occasion

a shedful of din

to collect your clutter in -

while the world upon its axle spins

I close my eyes...start to grin.