Ce n’est pas un masque

At the bus stop

This morning,

I reach into the dedicated bag

And find I have packed wrongly,

Morning hands grabbing all in the wake from

Bedroom gown, to front door

And in my hand I find

Not a mask,

But an apple.

I of course, curse,

Then laughing I hold it up to, and

In front of, my mouth

To look like Magritte’s

Le fils de l’homme ;

A leafed world held in its orbit around my face.

The bus goes past –

I breathe in orchards

I breathe the speech of hives,

The tang of memory.

I breathe in tart green evocation

From the fruit

To the branch

To the bark

To the loam

To the life.

Dan Belton

14^th February 2020

The Son of Man

(this prob needs work, but, the iron was hot)

“The Son of Man”           *

The post card says

“Dan here is a photo for you the old fashioned way –

(BOOTS!)”

And indeed ,within the dappled envelope

Is a proper, kindly thought,  a photograph,

Of  myself and diamond-chokered lady

At  a party, just introduced –

‘Intrigued’ the Kodak would say,

And now

Has just very politely blown me out.

She is very content being single, she says –

A state that is unusual for her.

I am just the opposite I declare,

Which must smack just of desperation just as

My moustache was once redolent of

The stink of cigar ash,

Which I’d blithely convince myself was odourless and

Therefore, I did not smoke.

The party is a Surrealist party and just outside the photographs

Boundary is a girl drinking spirits with a spoon from an iced bowl

And dressed as a box of Special K.

It truly transpires she is dyslexic and her computer

Cyber-rattled, Hawking-Like that she was invited to a

‘Cereal Party’

And one can’t help but wonder, if she,

between spoon-sips from her punch bowl,

Wonders why no-one else is dressed as Golden Graham –

Or where are the Sugar-Puffs…

Does no man have a Variety 6-Pack?

Back in the photograph,

We stand, drinks in hands, grins on our masks,

About to swap phone numbers.

One wears a beret and hair net.

One wears a Bowler,

One wears a tight red tie,

One wears a lace ruff.

About to swap phone numbers,

Trying, party deaf, not to get names wrong,

And then to only dial them once.

You have the seductive knickers

Of an enamel banded wasp.

I have the face of a sweetly perpsiring

Granny Smith.

This should of worked so well.

* from the Magritte painting, “The son of Man”

Dan Belton 3/7/12