peace or whatever comes closest, whatever’s left dawdling on the horizon
your full moon on the day before Christmas being Auden's (or, if Plath's, only in that execrable stuff you’ve been scribbling)
simmering family angers coming to boil in the bag
your middleaged familiar, Puff The Magic Dragon of Extinction, keeping to the back of the cave
the child giving the Thomas The TWank Engine and Lazy Town DVDs a rest and opting for Shaun The Sheep (or something similarly non-mind-contracting)
elastic flesh full of itchy surprises and flesh in tatters grating into the long sleep
spectacular kick-the-books-off-the-shelf sex or, if that is no longer on the menu, compassionate skin & tonic, whatever you’re wanting
the absent friends, the dead as doornails, the terminally lonely, the happily alone, the mastered by depression, the getting on with it, the coping, the coped with
tomorrow being less boring but not nearly as interesting as the Interesting Times we live in
nobody calling just now (maybe later)
