sweep the letters that hang from fading signs toss them rumbled and worn into arid air – devoid of colour and gasping for breath throw them behind the mind of one with shoulder-shrug cares who watches the lacerations of the she – stripped bare in declaration of paper cut wearing - lacking depth but stinging all the same try to stick them felt-tipped below the headlines as dust devils re-arrange a tangled alphabet from foreign tongues split over lips and spat out to fall down - an abandoned muse somewhere