Stiff and starched white,
This body commands space.
Skin-hot, marble-cool
compelling fingers to touch, skim, wander.
Pieces or whole,
susurrating all the same.
Leaflets, pamphlets,
brochures, maps, scrolls.
Ageing yet alluring;
patience tempers in
bundles, mounds, stacks
foot-high, metre-tall, towering.
Missing words gape -
the body shouts itself
hoarse imploring for
pictures, poems, plans, anything!
It likes itself
empty, unassuming
yet desiring
revolutions, ambition, war.
Quietly it folds away
piece by piece, scrap by scrap
paper dreams.
Let loose it sprints, catching winds of
sparks, minds, flames, inferno.
