The Ice Palace

A great network of cloth and couch inside the sheer ice-walls,
cold, opaque, beyond the limits of interaction. This is my Hell.
(Hell need not be an evil place, my darling.
By Hell I mean Heaven, my Heaven,
one without camp little angels playing Jim Reeves tunes on harps.)

Anywhere a little bit claustrophobic would perform just as well, however;
a bedroom overlooking an alleyway
so I can lay awake at night in the warm and light
and think: I'm in here, cosy as the grave, and they're out there,
Death and the tramps having sex in the bins...

(Death, after all, is a bit of a pervert,
comin' over 'ere, takin' us by surprise, just like the bloody immig'ants...)
The Ice Palace is that place in my dreams where I imagine myself
while sitting in bars or at family functions,
pretending to be healthy, serene, and still fully human.