How To Play

By Peter Halstead

On top of fluted spines
Between the massing pools
Of dark chromatic lines

And using blood for fuel
Follow all the signs
And signatures

Read the fine print
On the flapping label
In the search for love

So the incidentals
Of the dim rule
On the page above

Take the clouded hint
Or later on you’ll
Tend to bluff

In the no man’s land
Of the intellectual
Handcuffed to chance

And lost in jewels:
A dream of hell
With inhuman hands.