Decorating

wrench a radiator loose and tip it 

face down, onto the floor

this creates an abstraction:

where once was unreachable

behind

is now apparent,

as in a photographers imagination,

and a pool of black bile will form on the floor

empty houses are filled with sculpture:

scraped into the cracks and holes of rented occupance

stresses and then places 

where pictures would have hung

a bannister 

the width of a leg 

is unscrewed and carried upstairs

with no space to balance, as on tightrope

laid diagonally across an old sheet 

in the middle of the bedroom floor;

deletion becomes

felled purpose again

magnolia

anaglypta

tea-stain parchment or

builders tongue 

handles

unscrewed laid glinting 

in jagged rows

on summer sills

we strip a house to its cave

and still there is all this

wallpaper scraped away

revealing the plasterer

and his mates

proud 

and less proud 

signature

accompanying a drawing

of a woman spread eagled

and a cartoon shit  

dali's universe in reverse

doors are mobile

there's always a line of brick dust above them

you'd be surprised how often 

a builder leaves the sun 

in the cavity between walls:

in this house 

there was a sleeping one

gifted on a barrow of rubble

cutting in dimensions

between boxes of skin 

with wallpaper guns

sloshed on scrolls

slit by a fold and 

ivory handled knife

the conversation

between father, his work mate and son:

father often farts

and will impart wisdom

only to declaim 

nervous justification

over a job

nearly well done

the work mate often burps

and takes pleasure in distending these expressions

of the loss of wind

there isn't much else to say

except rhetorical prompts 

to the same end

though

occasionally love is proffered

in a cold chip, or compliment

gestures outweighed

by hours of silence

and speechless boredom

kitchen Fanta

10am

r n b in do it all

the decorator dreams 

of wiring streets 

so downstairs switches 

upstairs on