Faint sound of bagpipes in the shower room:
a nice touch,
otherwise just what I might expect:
everything stripped down bare
Nothing to complain about:
clean, neat, white, neat, empty
Nothing left lying about:
no sign of life at all,
like a sterile cell from another dimension,
alien,
unfolded just for me:
a grand design
Outside, hollow night:
extras stroll stiffly in the street
to deceive me into thinking
this set is real
Sometimes they look up guiltily
but never stop
Like dancers down by the river
free before 10pm
they beckon to me without passion:
deep water lapping at
plain flood plain
The magician need not think he has me fooled:
all this catlike, cunning plumbing
will disappear tomorrow,
scurry back into some quantum state
paradoxically certain
Behind the curtain
he tries again:
the same old last-century trick
conjuring bagpipes
from thin, thin air