Without polish on our fingernails are the same colour as the background of the Paula Green issue of Poetry NZ, not the greyed down claret of her eyes and mouth but the fingernaily grey-pink of her ears.

Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the hotels is female entanglements--mendacious, unwifely, and for him unavailing.

Yea, suppoise he did all the werkis of man and angell.

Keep fucking with me, and I'm gonna put my foot up your ass.