Bad Luck Story

Born with two turned eyes,

trophy-handle ears,

a pair of nostrils equine size,

and grew pimples, boils, hairy moles,

teeth that chipped, yellowed

and slanted like old tombstones.

To a father welting with an iron rod,

a mother’s caustic hands

cracking red-raw skin, drawing blood.

One teen sister pregnant left behind.

The other a needle  whore.

The butt of every broken misfortunate’s joke

on an estate where no-one  heard

above the screeching of their own four walls,

in a town not worth  mentioning

on the edge of a retreating world.

Then pucked from big bully

to small bully in the classroom,

jerked around the schoolyard like a marionette.

Branded spastic, toolbox, thicko, shit-face,

knacker, big ears, Frankenstein.

In a decade belonging to accountants and touts,

butchers and priests, what future?

Top of the world on a government scheme?

Frying on the wing for a hamburger team?

No

You stepped right out of those tracks,

sweet sixteen,

and mused a week, we’ll say,

on your design.

Shed,

Barrel,

Tube,

Mask,

Switch,

Gas,

This one thing you rounded off so handsomely.

This one thing you would not leave to accident.