Fancy dress

However timid my heart, I will wear

it where I please, on my sleeve or my hat

or under linen skin, layer upon layer;

hide it within the staunchest rib, a nightmare

maze of bone and secrets, crosshatched slats,

but they’ll still find it and pick it quite bare.

The hats too shorn of every rosette, the caps,

of feathers, badges; would you know me then

for your own among this mass of passive men?

They’ll pluck it clean from the cloth, a pulse, a sob

of breath, a scrap of flesh, hardly a throb,

a drop of blood on the wires of timetraps.