Flam
I junk up
the gaps in our conversation,
littering the barren
patches with scramble, quick
rigmaroles of incident.
Into pause
I pour thin, syrupy
gloys of invention:
plug the chat's flat atrophy
with aspestos flam.
I bodge up
the odd hiatus with a blend
of baffle and wag,
lightly lathering the quiet
murmurs of meaning.
With pancake,
the rash can be dabbed out;
and currents of rumour
are dammed by well-angled
handfuls of gravel.
We dub this
dialogue with tracked banter,
dodging the signals
with great daubs of matted
emulsion, unstirred.
Can't get through
the jam on our frequency:
and the last honest
palsy is smoothly soothed or
stifled by sidestep.
Look at the
wall: where's the bare brick now?
Rendered in pebbledash.
Its scratchmarks, quirks, they're all
wrapped like lozenges.
I fill in
the cavities of our conversation
with pestered nonsense:
now are words are luggage, dumb,
and wholly disposable.
The surface
squeaks, it is ballroom, polish,
done up for evenings:
I cover our incomprehension
with drapes of dust-sheet.