you with your tiny sharp teeth
gleaming from the perfect image i have captured
in a dark, dark room

you with your back straight as a whip
and ribs that poke out from your casing
a polished, waxen and cerulean blanket --a desert, a cloak
a severe stretch of plastic over the spokes

when i think of your skin
i think of you wound around my finger
in fibreglass threads that make all of me purple
aching for blood and for you

your hip bone in particular interests me
there is no matching doorway on my frame
and no way to discover its key
you will turn left or right during the long night
and i will find a mantle on which to rest or to hang

is there not a part i may address
beyond the perfunctory business of watching you
undress?

---- january 2005