For the man in the comic strip
things are not funny. No wonder he’s
running in whichever direction his pisspoor
piston legs are facing
getting nowhere fast.
If only he had the sense he was born with
he’d know there is a world of difference
between the thinks bubble and the speech balloon
and when to keep it zipped, so, with a visible fastener –
But his mouth is always getting him into trouble.
Fistfights blossom round him,
there are flowers explode when the punches connect.
A good idea is a light bulb, but too seldom.
When he curses, spirals
and asterisks and exclamation marks
whizz around his head like his always palpable distress.
Fear comes off him like petals from a daisy.
Anger brings lightning down on his head and
has him hopping.
Hunger fills the space around him
with floating ideograms of roasted chickens
and iced buns like maidens’ breasts the way
the scent of money fills his eyes with dollar signs.
For him the heart is always a beating heart,
True Love –
always comically unrequited.
The unmistakable silhouette of his one-and-only
will always be kissing another
behind the shades at her window
and, down-at-the-mouth, he’ll
always have to watch it from the graphic
lamplit street.
He never knows what is around the corner,
although we can see it coming.
When he is shocked his hair stands perfectly on end
but his scream is a total zero and he knows it.
Knows to beware of the zigzags of danger,
knows how very different from
the beeline of zees that is a hostile horizontal buzzing
of singleminded insects swarming after him
are the gorgeous big haphazard zeds of sleep.
LIZ LOCHHEAD