Cocktails with flowers
I’d say that’s the way to go

I look around

Christmas lights
Beer
Shopping bags
Forks and knifes in pretend tins
Black boards in pretend handwriting

This flower is real
Swimming in my pretend elixir:
infused tea gin.

Queues
Enthusiastic chat
Air kisses
Coats
Pretend romance hairdos
Feet in pretend power shoes

But this flower is real
Floating in my pretend fun evening
Energising my pretend self-sufficient grin

Perhaps none of us are pretending.
Even the fake utilitarian tins
in this fashionable down-to-earth theatre of a bar
have a right to reality
A right to exist

Let’s all become
cocktails
with flowers

Are they pretentious?

Oh, spare the flowers
They can’t pretend

I am this jolly drunk flower.
Let me just be.