Conceit: extended metaphor, hard won.

This overcast windscreen,
 a toad's bumpy rump,
ripples and blinkers all else. 
 He uses his tireless legs to smooth his skin
but like old age 
 the sifted rain continues
to dimple his flesh
slowly and steadily
a gentle timpani 
 beating his spurts of youthful vigour
 sprinkling wrinkles on skin
 becoming a toad.

Rising before us, the pregnant stage point stands,
every eye and ear awaiting the conductor’s leap
because when that hand swings, the sun will spring to life

and I and my mate, we are swallowed in the sunrise,
carried at the centre of a world awash with morning music,
drowning in Dvorak, Debussy, delight.

The breeze builds,
the wind roars and something explodes.
Violence and love go to war
with untoned arms in tune,
slashing and sawing.
I am attacked.
Ranks of architects, accountants and teachers,
march with dusk-drilled grace,
I see as headless bodies from where I lay slain near the grand legs.
Demisemiquavers quake like a bow
at the sound of a rattling quiver half-full
as the brown bass rolls beneath the army’s feet.

They strike, turn, execute
the music and me,
and I am strung up, unskinned
by, after all the fear,

a slow elbow.