i am legend

proclaims the tee shirt over
a belly whose folds like
the energizer bunny go
on and on and on.
crossed meaty arms display
a gallery of tattooed self-expression;
the first school-biro-scratched
again and again during maths
or one of the inhumanities,
baz and toni with a lop-sided
heart, gules on a putty
blue-veined field; others
present an unslayable
dragon rampant and a
weeping death’s head.
his eyes, buried in folds
like a basking lizard
traverse mall life with blank
impassibility, or is it
a philosophical reserve neither
to assent or reject but to
endure what the moment offers?

at what stage exactly does the boy
know he will never play for
england, the young woman just
put up with the bloke she’s got, or
the trader, bending over backwards to
scratch the itch of avarice say
enough, i have enough?
each of us reaches a high tide
and then begins the long ebb as
we clutch our rags about us and call
them robes: dignity, respect, street
fame, local legend, calling a
settled kind of hopelessness,
my life.

the lizard eyes catch me looking,
they say, ‘hello brother’,
a hiatus of understanding, then
we turn each to our solitary way
lost in the crowd of years.