Haiku: Fashion

copyright Francis Barker 2020

I Don’t Buy Shoes

shoes2

The other day I had cause

to open your wardrobe and shoes

fell out like maggots

from a corpse.

New shoes

old shoes

blue shoes

broken shoes.

A pair for every day of the year

it seemed.

Try as I might

I couldn’t get them all back, for

I don’t have your gift

for packing or hoarding. So I

put some in my wardrobe

because I don’t buy any shoes.

City Nights

Though your faces
change these same streets
remain. Same high
sights in floodlit stone,
city nights abased
by brawls and chilli fights
in queues

Where were you when
I was this green
and victim?
Your fashion is the masque
of fools, disguises nothing;
your life like mine is
still waste

But somehow you’re
preoccupied.
Laugh in my face and deride
my reticence— won’t you!
So it always
was, for soon the dreaming
is done