now flowers get their colours from cue cards
and poems drive foreign cars
and my footsteps have left me for another city
where’s there’s snow and
they can leave a record
and Tuesday is like a balloon in a drawer
way at the back with the paper clips
and the nails I bought
to hang Le Moulin de la Galette
above the couch with
the cigarette burn in the cushion
and I find it all a little depressing
it makes me feel like Rick in Casablanca
dashing but grim
and just a little too ugly, after all
for Ilsa Lund Laszlo
with her studio light eyes and
needy forbearance
but of all the drawers in all the towns in all the world
that balloon had to be in mine
flaccid and red
where the hell is Sydney Greenstreet
when you really need him?
lost ironies 
indeed