the factory stops
and all the workers spill
out of my ears

chanting vive la liberté
and gabriel garcía márquez

the smokestacks rise
above their tenements
they go back

their worn hands
like the hands of clocks tell time

outside
a boy and a girl
play in a green field

i can smell green says the girl
says the boy i can smell nothing

hair slicked back
pink tongue
sticking out

the maître d' dances like an angel
on the head of a pin

rock scissors paper pen polite cough
all inventions
of the man

spending the day
colouring the heart on his sleeve

black
and red

if you understand this poem
i will write you a song
on the leaves of grass

for a thousand years to be sung
to a string quartet played by sylvester stallone

and the workers that came
out of my ears
would roll back to the factory tiers

so as to not mistake can't for canto and mist for mystery
if you didn't