Ventriloquists and Dolls - Momus

Traffic lights are changing in the distance

The radio plays Brahms

Opening the door of his Fiesta the ventriloquist

Steps out into the air beneath the stars

Rubs his hands against the frost

And tucks the dummy in her case beneath his arm

Ventriloquists and dolls

Tailors and their dummies

Moving in parallel worlds

Like wolves and little girls

Gangsters and their molls

Ventriloquists and dolls

And slowly on his painful wooden leg the ventriloquist

Clumps up the wooden steps towards his flat

A single room filled up with mannequins

And dangling from the beams on tangled strings, a marionette

And his carving’s been so painstaking it looks for all the world

Like flesh and blood

Realistic to a fault, his dolls are portraits carved in wood

Of little girls

And opening the bottle with his teeth

He pours the beer into the beerglass on the bed

Drinks it at a gulp, brings up the gas

Takes off his pants, unscrews his wooden leg

And though his face is frighteningly ugly and he takes her by surprise and very

fast

The doll he crushes under him immediately agrees to everything he asks