I am more empty

than something sucked dry

by a man lost thirty days

in a desert and now

found
I feel the leg hairs of ants on my temples

and they knock

and wait for someone to open the door,

but there is no doorman

in strangling suit of blue

or maroon, or some tertiary
instead there’s a cup on a table

and it’s just about to be filled,

though not until the little man

gets back with the paper,

and by the look of the spider webs

it seems that he left weeks ago

and was in quite a hurry, his hat still on a hallway peg
I’m still looking for him, his brain

is valuable; the way he’d read his own headlines

before acting out the best bits of movies

with woodchips from the flower pots

or lie and say he had Peter Sellers’ copy of

In the Mood 

or that one of his ancestors slept

beneath Cadair Idris and went mad

and ate chicken feathers all year

until he wasted away.