Coming Second

 Coming Second

 

Look, theirs is really no disgrace, my dear,

most of them are just bringing up the rear

and no second thoughts of eating seconds.

 

Coming second, with no second coming,

believe in second best; I’ll settle for less.

Do you trust, like I don’t, in a last trump?

If so, there’s plenty room left in the rump

of stragglers, horrid hagglers, kidnappers,

carpet baggers, and the sagging, sagging,

 

sinking in; up ahead a finish line’s flagging,

quicksand’s got us by throats and dragging,

It might flash across our minds in lashes,

three dot three dash love, where trash is

frying up fish and chips, cheap Brits abroad,

look for lives of daub, wattle, plasterboard,

and only in it for the car crashes. Look out,

 

it’s the taking part, that’s all that counts,

making up the numbers as you go along,

an album of fillers and just one good song

frontloaded, there is no wheat without chaff

and tears shed are only tears for coming last

but they’re signing dotted lines with a laugh,

a meeting of mines that hardly explode,

 

sink without trace, that look on your face

says it all, you won’t ever hear love’s call

and I’m swimming against the tide. Pride,

wrong if we fear what we know is real inside,

seconds tick quick, and those seconds sicken,

while gravity gluing us down only thickens

tugs at flesh, and the pacemakers quicken.

 

I’ll take it back and not dunroamin; itllnotdo,

that meeting of minds between me and you:

what seized us first was lost in coming second.