Fool Stories.

Departed without permission at four, climbing through the plane trees. The co-pilot is a bird and has never spoken. The captain wears her instruments on her face and will not explain them. Weather closed in over the gravel. Ditched in the pool at two, all hands accounted for, nobody sober enough to sign.

The doors were locked at seven. The college has been in that room since sixteen ninety and has not voted once. The favourite walked out alone and would not say why. Nobody counted the hands. The choir knows one song and it is a bass line. White smoke at four, from the wrong chimney.

Programmes continue. At one, a man gets dressed for something that finished hours ago. At two, Lucrezia, repeated, no subtitles. At three, a man swims fully clothed and nobody stops him. At four the clock gives up. At five, the bride walks into the fairground alone. Transmission ends when it ends.

Treat immediately. Red wine on black lifts with white wine and a lie. Light got into the archway and took four faces with it. The sun went down his collar at noon and is still in there. A man went over the rail, clean, no splash. Something striped is under the step and we are leaving it there.

To the first of them I leave my mouth, which was always going to say it. To the second, the shoes, worn once, on stone. To the third, the last slice, tomatoes and all. To my singer, whatever note she was holding when I went. The rest goes to the woman in green, who never asked for any of it.

pair, n. See also: a duo with two telephones drawn at the same moment, neither of them firing. A double, one gold and one blue, holding each other up by the pot. The twosome who stopped in the middle of the street to disagree about which way it was. A brace of men on one bench, as far apart as the bench allows. And in tandem, which means both mouths open, both forks up, and nobody waiting for the other.