Acid Attack

 

Seventeen, he saunters into the gents,

traces of a mate’s joke on his lips.

The two skulking men leer over shoulders

to appraise the boy’s threat.

 

Croaking Alright

as if pacifying a pair of dangerous dogs,

he selects the furthest urinal.

But they see the fumbled flies,

smell his sweat

hear his tachycardia and

 

slide either side of him

to begin a vicious audit of his body.

Tearing himself from the paralysis of their venom words

he stumbles out the door,

stutters excuses to his pals of ‘feeling unwell’,

then sits in a lay- by sobbing.

 

Twenty years on , every looking glass shows him

a fairground mirror reflection.

So out with mates or on first dates,

a taunting tinnitus   ‘ You are grotesque’.

 

Despite holding our own wasps’ nest pasts,

the therapy group stares, through mizzled eyes at

this man who could adorn an aftershave advert.