Scraping and bowing

Tangled strands of your life and my life
knot up like my hair
We catch a train to a turgid somewhere old
Ruptured thoughts that slither and spatter
inside of my head
Send me nauseous for the porcelain bowl
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again
does nothing for your system
just gives you rheumatism

Sally sneers, her ballet Napoleon
has sunk without trace in a blue rinse
But all I want, she storms, is teenage boys
The girl has wit – her discourse on Chaucer
not visible, welcome or hip
Although spiced up with crack dens and sex toys
Crying and shouting and knocking them back
She stamps her heavy feet
and beats a sad retreat to the loo

A life's main dilemma
played out in rep each night
What if my limitations are what keeps me alright?
A safety valve, a timed release
A way to discern between that and this

Worry lines that deepen like treason
Relief maps of pain
Sharpened pencils etch their groove again

Poor young soul, he strove and he strove
despite lack of a brain to judge with
and he drove himself onto a coronary
His sixty-fifth self-published novella
now hung out to dry in the death wind
Something gives with the critical faculty
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again