CONCERNING ETIQUETTE Poem by Marc Kregting

Countless jostled in front of the window in order of letdown. Yet still dead birdie's umpteenth mother, throwing her shoulders back, exclaimed that rancour was out of step. They had said that the fields were covered in wondrous white. Decorum called for no more tending than that of a quick vivacious glance that didn't involve a cowl muscle. ‘That's set in stone as you know full well.' Dead birdie saw salty mountains of stone, which it had already let slip. In other words, rancour wasn't chic, brought about haphazard plasma-flows; one shouldn't minister naked ganglion. And under no circumstance should one bare one's teeth but prick up one's feather and even then only to waft them in compassionate company. Oh Saint Apollonia, in its hands dead birdie blew molars chlorosis straight into reprimands (he who bares his deepest innermost uninvited becomes poseur). But hang on, it thought, he who never admits blame is just as unlikely to apologise: highest attainable is the perforatable excuse me. It was in a shop selling second-hand computers to be transmuted into vegan burgers. Dead birdie was once again juggling the lubricating oil, while it received dyed-in-the-wool messages from its fillings. Onwards it wanted, onwards.

For a good stability pact dead birdie had to be honey bun, making headway with a slumbering political cold. Extremely cold that it scolds itself and brings great joy onto itself. Winners are impervious to pain, wishing anything else on them is mean, the flower narcissus. Or intelligibly undesired and then failing to own up to it. Put up with it? It isn't smart to say you are smart. It is stupid though to say you are stupid.

Before it was finished. Like a wafer around a closely folded letter, the nets fit tightly round its belly that otherwise would not brown. The radiation of the agate sun, especially that captured by the impeccable steppes, shouldn't be underestimated. It would be equally ignominious, dead birdie chides itself to the benefit of the common good and for security reasons it excommunicates it. But it will out where it can't and is that a miracle? ‘When your eyes spot something disagreeable you quickly cover them with your hands or you close them. But try covering your thoughts with your hands, or try closing your thoughts down,' Charlotte Mutsaers wrote. What would actually happen in the event of dead birdie being treated according to the same criteria as with which it treated its autres? Was it the billy goat with the orthopaedic shoes? It listens to music. Honking horns and accidents invariably coincide rhythmically perfect. Dead birdie still wants to fry a minced steak so it can dip a slice of bread in the gravy. And finally following a price adjustment it was let out. Snowmen were built, fields raped by grass - that could bite.