Moving the mannequins
How do we carry them?
How can the body be spare?
Nobodies, everybody nowhere
Nothing to wear, no hair, no air
But graceful poises, not making noises
Standing so silently, spare
In use or out of it, in storage in the cupboard
Up in the attic
Wholly vacant like some static
The status quo of not moving at all
All hail human existence
Looking in the mirror at the dummy
The numb, dumb country bumpkin
The straw man, scarecrow
Worzel Gummidge figure
Come in to transfigure the interior design
Portfolio of foliage
Caught a cold you know like Coleridge
Walking out in the snow and storm like Keats
Cathy come home staring out the window
For Heathcliff
On the cold moors, the dale
That separates our homes
Mechanical walking of limbs
Legs and spare arms carried
As if by medical students to the
Dissecting theatre
The autopsy of the dead relative begins
Where is she now?
Where is her soul, I can't find it
In her model's eyes
What do I want with her body?
With her imperialist grey skies
That have dominated me
From sunrise to moonrise
The set order of a regimen of lies
To get me down the endless catwalk of Winter
Into Spring
Looking in shop window reflections
To make sure I still exist
And have not been turned into
Yet another of her mannequins
On her archived list