Poster!

i.

Crusty slogans slip off cliffs
still smelling of glue but bending

to gravity’s naggings. The sag
is a two-for-one holiday of woe.

I mean to be old, they say,
the dogma of my youth has gone.

But men on ladders who know
too well that cirque du soleil is over

come along to pull them down.

ii.

This Chinese Medicinal Centre
seems to have made its posters
with some in-house contraption
and one of them

tells me that Lee used to be
very, very fat. A picture of him
confirms that. But utilising
treatment, says the next picture,

you can look like Lee’s
newly slimmer self who
is in fact, I have never been surer,
an entirely different human

kettle of fish. It’s not
even his brother, you lying
poster who deserves every
paper cut. It’s just like the time

I spent two days
constructing Tracy Island,
only to have wasted a tree
and stuck my hand in glue.