Face

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It’s hard being whacked, your face afire
and enflamed, the sky a grey falling.
Bucketing your way through life
there is the discolouration, avocado and pink
with childhood aches, everyone
lashing and receding, all the swings
landing square on the maxilla. And it is
like smokes, white,
beautiful -
human ire and seeing the world
as a famished child, a crack-addicted
mother, yellow-eyed, skull-faced
before the looking glass and everything
there in the blame. And ooh to be
justified in our mirrored selves,
everyone trying to claim virtue
up their sleeves,
gods telling us
to obey the rules, and we cannot do it,
until the final spank comes and we
in all our mortal fragility strike back -
Until then, we may think the saw
a caw, an anecdote, a despair, a welcome
rug for the world’s malice.
And only then can one see the work,
the labour of the hands
the only true revenge.
A small peace like sky and star or moon.
It sounds so artless,
until the world is so deep,
a triggered lightning rod
through the depth.
All the hurt in life culminating
in the explosion
of our aloneness. My own fist
sore from the swing.  What a reeking bore -
this fascination with mirrors.
And there my face
a sceptical mirth.
The consideration a gauntlet,
a sparring loop, and tolerance,
is not something
easy for the colonised.
It’s like counting
stars after being hit hard.
The enormity
of our smallness a drizzle.
And ooh, to forgive
and forget is too challenging, but it is needed.
Otherwise, this pale bony cheek
is faded further
into the insignificance of indignation.
So, the world is unfair, and there isn’t
a man who has not felt the definitive sting
of this. Death coming.
Mangoes, unpicked
fallen on the dry grass, rot.
This is the
story of loss. It is a thoughtful tale of living.
Who can tell the inconsequential shades
of unstated fury?
Everywhere quivering
with grudging eyelashes, pouty lips,
hands on hips -
everyone wanting the world
to give them something
back for their travail, and it never comes -
life is suffering and suffering life,
only the relief,
the resolution, the return.
Beauty.
Everything retrievable
and death’s mantle
always white like clouds.
Here is my round
face world; it is well-nourished,
and my battle-lust
with this mirror begins again, but at best,
for once, I see, it is but an image.
There is nothing there,
personality
an imitation, a slack lilt
of idyllic tune,
travelling into the vacuity all about.
Here is a poem, for the lost angers,
the unrecompensed,
those who walk bearing the whinges
of vengeance, a sucker’s sunhat for the making.