In the evening, the theatre is filling:
MK Gallery closes, abandoned art in bare rooms.

The clamour is outside, queues building
for bag searches and ticket checks.

Inside the foyer, a rush
to buy programmes, take seats

to tonight’s entertainment. Actors, singers, dancers:
pantomime villains taking the stage,

contorting bodies to please.
Audiences clapping daring difference,

dreaming they could also be
somehow better, somehow changed,

and are – at least for an hour
until the curtain falls.