Dive Bar

Through a red door down a steep flight
of stairs into a windowless cellar
with sweating walls
an ingénue in a smoking jacket
sits atop a piano
as a host of swaying women
sing ‘Your Secret’s Safe with Me’
and one invites you
into the privacy of a kiss – all these
dark clandestine places – and you find
yourself imagining a very tiny
woman walking straight
into her mouth
through a red door down a steep flight
of throat into a windowless cell
with breathing walls
an ingénue in a smoke-jacket
sits astride a piano
as a host of swallowed women
sing ‘Your Secret’s in a Safe,’
the barmaid shakes a custom
cocktail she calls ‘A Private Kiss’– all these
dark half-eaten faces – and you find
yourself imagining a tiny tiny
woman walking straight
into her mouth
through a red breath down a dark
thought into a swallowed sense
with shrinking walls
an innuendo in stomach acid
slops upon a piano
as a host of silent passions
mouth ‘Your Secret is Yourself’
inside the belly of the world – all these
dark dissolving spaces – and you find
yourself imagining a windowless
woman breaking
walls down in herself, sprinting
up the shrinking
halls and up contracting
corridors and up the choking
fits of hard stares through dark
thoughts and dead
laws through the red door
as it swallows shut behind you
now you’re spat out
on the pavement with the
sun just
coming out.