Watering eyes hurtle around the room,
Pinballing for a conversation starter
settle upon the posters on his wall
(a shocked expression, a jeer, even a catcall)
"What'd you say you did again?"

"Saw you five years ago"s ripple through verdant venom
already seeped into the darkened heels' bolero.
Polite tablecloths strangle tight-lipped (s)miles
While Forks and spoons belie daggers and maces,
and wolf-grown noses sniff out untied laces

as covert glances squeal off chairs
thin shirt, baggy pants, short skirt,
the wizened shoe with the frayed tip
the drunken wrecking ball with the fat lip
Smiling blearily into our crosshairs

Phone calls around the world gather
The dinner symphony orchestra.
Audience hungry, monocles raging red
knives on glass cups knell out minuets
sharply- they send the ringmaster to bed

For the cuckoo's signal when flower-tainted lips
Slip open. Chewing silver bullets for our
Weariness and ravenousness for aspersions, our
cutlery stabbing guilt-free pudding into oblivion
Dropping with a clatter; your jaw when you hear me and

Crumple
to the ground like a used napkin
melt into a crinkled stain upon nobility,
vacuumed away as fast as possible by
blasé maidservants- they've seen enough.

Decorum gobbled by the hounds in a dusty corner
While the world is wound back over again
Cuckoo in the corner; bones forced into a squawk
too often lifted back up, and hoisted into the clock

Like now, your six feet of ire driving through chandeliers
Rising through endless rivers of sky-patterned cloth,
Promptly stuffed into a paper sack and thrown into the clock

So dinner can continue.