The Second Time as Farce

Illustration: Ian Carrington

The men in orange and yellow striped lycra tights,
the men in fishnet stockings and white silk suspender belts,
are calling to the women wearing pink lace fairy wings,
the women wearing yellow San Diego cheerleader vests,

and the men in bottle-blonde Marilyn Monroe wigs,
the boys in animal masks borrowed from The Wicker Man,
are calling to the women wearing green leather basques,
the girls in cut-off denim shorts and cowboy boots,

and the men dressed in football shirts and velour jester hats,
the men dressed as Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice,
are calling to the women wearing Blade Runner retro-1940s hair,
wearing pencil skirts, red lipstick, scarlet fingernails,

and the men dressed as Batman and Robin, as Adam West and Burt Ward,
the men in clown suits, or wearing Primark suits and ties,
are calling to the women in red-framed plastic spectacles
whose hair is inflamed to Dallas heights or roughly dyed,

and the man wearing nothing but his blue cotton boxer shorts,
the men in gimp masks and burkas and Biblical robes,
are calling to the women dressed as nurses and chambermaids,
the girl dressed as someone I think I met, once, back in nineteen eighty-six,

and the man in a rubber Point Break Richard Nixon mask,
the men in Matrix coats, in wide-brimmed black leather hats,
are calling to the women dressed in T-shirts that read: ‘Frankie Says...’,
dressed as Toyah, Siouxsie Sioux and Cruella de Ville,

and the music that drifts from the windows of all the pubs
is by Eurythmics, by Whitney Houston and Adam Ant,
and the tinny music playing on every mobile phone
is by Grandmaster Flash, Five Star, The Smiths and Culture Club,

and they keep coming, gathered in groups of four or six,
to the epicentre of this Wednesday night, to Market Square,
to the open doors of Yates’s, the two-for-one Jagerbomb carpet-bars,
the cocktail lounge where nothing’s changed since 1993,

and in all this, between folk memory, amnesia and marketing,
the men in orange and yellow striped lycra tights
and the men in fishnet stockings and silk suspender belts
are still calling to the women wearing pink lace fairy wings.

First published in Black Glass (New and Selected Poems), Shoestring Press, 2015.

Wayne Burrows is launching his latest collection Exotica Suite at the New Art Exchange, 6 - 9pm, Friday 10 July. The book is accompanied by a CD of the texts set to music by Paul Isherwood (The Soundcarriers) and the launch will include a screening of films followed by a discussion. All for free.

New Art Exchange event