Mandarin in a silent film he wings past painted women chalked in doorways gesturing with fragile lacquered hands.
Large yellow bird he alights in a foreign land his buttocks fan the perch of a stool
fluttering his eyes rise swallow the eddy of human forms swabbed in denim shod in boots.
His stemmed drink stands clear among tumblers of foaming beer and he sips-with ease of Eliot attending an effusive reading-as the music grinds in 4/4 time.
The stranger steals from the Victorian bed combs a hard hand through his blond dead gazing in sandalwood scented gloom at the soft yellow bird asleep i
