I’ve seen that face before

I’ve seen that face before

I’ve seen that face before over the years 

drifting, pitching past life’s open doors

six scorned ten and scared,

you’re a million in one, friend, 

a harvest of pinched green scrumped apples

blinking in spectacled resentment

at scythes scraping seventy still plates

full and fallen into black bags of trash,

thick waisted, punch-drunk plastic sacked

hair, buns back-tied so tight the skin stretches

into grins at the last muffin on the shelf.

Sigh. Drag your bitter baggage on wheels,

that overweight spouse in baseball hat,

forty years of watching tat, thinking zero,

all wind beneath my wings and hero

but that pigeon’s shitting in the street

while the cat is digging trenches.

You’ve seen that face before over the years, 

taking also ran selfies in life’s mirror,

winners, winners - chicken dinners,

she’s a million in one, friend.

Arrived but we don't know where we've been,

what we're doing, where we're going,

strictly come cutout caterwauling vicious kittening

in drunk screamed glee, but no one listening,

fashioned from a dress your own doll book

in X Ray specs, pointing plastic telescopes

from expired Christmas crackers

at the other end of nearly dead,

self-portrait in unsqueezed blackheads

and flicked cat tray grit, did somebody say Just Eat?

Mugging it, fumbling at bed sheets,

down the gym, then drink, repeat,

down the gym, then drink, repeat,

until the liver and spleen bottles it.

Glazed in ever-fixed drizzled iced lemon fingers,

flicking phone screens like flicking snot

then wipe, scan for all the lives that matter,

scrape your nail beneath the seat in front,

then to the four winds scatter

but that pigeon’s still shitting in the street

while the dog is lifting its leg.