Party Clothes
(after Michael Rosen)

They’re dressed in civvies, all smiles
when they first come knocking at your door.
They want you to play their clean-up game:
knock knock music of the segregation chairs.

They keep the uniforms of fancy dress
pressed and under wraps, hanging
in the sardine compartment of the wardrobe.
In the small hours, when you and I

are smooching, they polish metal,
pass the parcel trappings of the torturer.
Before long they’re parading as charades,
helmeted, through tin pot streets.

If the cake fits, eat it. Beware of candles.
There will be bags to take home.