Seconds

No child,
To be fair, but few,
And fewer who'd recall,
Thinks about one of TH White's
Cruder Gallic stereotypes
Sir Lancelot's squire, Uncle Dap
Greasing up rusty bones inside
His cancerous cuirass.

But that desire to keep age close
Is still a thing we understand.
I don't dare to be known grown up,
I stutter in all but two pubs,
And firmer humans than I am still hold to former hands.
The risk's the last set's had must be, to us, a very fearful dose.

Article: you are beautiful
When beauty is a licensed point,
And in art stand empirical.

Your separatehood accounted for
In script's elastic ambergris,
You back him up professional like,
She, warming, tenders me.

We fired first by turning up
And you had winged me two years back.
The bullet with your name on it
Stored in these vocal veins.

He reloaded the cartridges with keys,
His beard kept pointing down, so, powder-free;
My medico would have sluiced smelling-salts
Were she not down with me.

Well, there's a something that cats do
(Beasts for whom you lack sympathy
Though they be)

Their angle poised necked such a way
That you can't bond with them head-on
Unless you're otiose to stares
They hide undersong walrus smiles
Just like those madeup shotsmoke eyes
Scan, as it might be, unawares.