The handsome troll could see them

contradictions like meteors

crash into the black of the street

where he collected them

in the pockets of his denim jacket.

To be thrown later

into the fire

that cooked his truthful songs.

The bearess and the wind

his companions

on motorcycle rides

rode around the island to

awaken volcanoes and get a rise

from the elves.

They howled at the sun

and laughed in the face of

camera wielding walkers.

Shouting truth! truth! truth!

something they kept

in the bottom of an old cigarette pack.

The bearess growled words of woe

One eye blue the other white

lost to a brawl on a dark afternoon.

She collected air fresheners from

pub toilets and cursed her father's vanity.

But love lived on in her eye.

This love for a handsome troll

came in jittering waves of chemical magic.

She saw them in bed all winter

eating the corpses of badly behaved lovers.

But he preferred the wind,

to chase her about the island,

and watch her dance in the trees

and surf the crest of waves

and blow the maps out of tourists hands

and when she was happy whisper in his ear

and when she was mad,

pound his windows and curse his songs.