Some thoughts on reading the " Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley"

Painted sails of paper boats
toss on horizons
where the kites of nostalgia
tug and struggle
with Bernoulli effects;
you have to run as fast as you can
into the wind,
you see,
and let go.
This is best done
near a cliff top
but parallel to, not
towards the edge,
where the winds swirl
and billow the legs
of white shorts
and splay the hair of girls
to curling mermaid tresses
salt stings grazed knees
and seagrass cuts bitter
as sherbet lemons.

Illustrations, some coloured-in
quite carefully really;
imprints of nail-bitten fists,
white knuckles clamped
around Lakeland pencil-crayons
swept into the fantastic
world of fin de siecle storyland.
Who would have thought Aubrey
as dissolute a Decadent
as all the others who produced
the wonders encased
in delicious
inherited hardbacked volumes.