I must be losing my grip,
all fingers and thumbs
from the nights of white rum.
But the ivory keys draw me in,
rounded at the edges, smoothed,
rancid butter-coloured enamel
like the horse-toothed
bar-buttresses I serenade tonight.
I yellow in sallow rhythm-light
to accompany the décor.
Smoking Compulsory Here.
Thank heaven for the black notes,
I cannot tell my chromatic,
rheumatic, tallowed
fingers from the off-whites.
Still, there is a cooling warmth
to the beached bones
of this smoothened keyboard,
salt-scoured by my earthy tunes.
Only my breasts resist
this gorse-hued coarsening,
this mellow tan leathering.
I flaunt a paleness of them tonight
and taunt the limp, curdling drinkers
with my double-barrelhoused,
clotted cream Milk Cow Blues.