Thinking Good Thoughts :a warning

All the anxious thoughts crawl

across her face with some thousand stinging legs

leaving ribbon edge creases of colour

and it looks like blush

If she had taken the whole tin

and then sneezed.

The red edged mushroom cloud

has covered her face and drops

with tentative tentacles down

to stretch across her neck

like a rose trellis

that is all thorns and no bloom

till her tall tower of a neck

was nothing more than a tangled trunk

supporting some monstrous bulb

that bounced balloonishly in the night air

The trunk sends down roots

ever thickening fingers that grasped and curled

around every available edge

leaving her mottled and mauve

under the pressure.

This will not end well they think.

For once they are right.

the long strings knot around her ankles

and tie around her toes at last

and there is no color left but grey.