Send word. Send poison experts
with bulletproof vests and superguns
and get them to order
mochas across the way.
Just one and I was charged
like a sixty-six inch cell,
zipping, talking by turns
like a drunk and an auctioneer.
My shoes were tyres, my hands were mutinous.
Work piled like peelings on my desk
while I jittered, counting pixels,
drumming a tattoo with my nails.
Panicked, on the bus
I stared at the seat back, trying
to ignore the heat, my book
which made me sick for looking down,
the Norwegian girl rowing with the driver,
a rabbit-beating heart
and sweat-stinging neck, the man
beside me, suffocating with his stink
and somehow got home, flung myself
through the doors, into the lift
and, shaking, onto the bed, while you
pressed a cup of water to my lips.
