Brace Yourself
 

You are someone’s saliva
Swirling in the arse
of a Dutch Gold can.
That metallic hit
off a cigarette, as it corrodes
into the filter. You’re the aroma
of that same can abused all night as an ashtray.
 
Wash up. Yours is no dreamlike
tumble off heaven’s kerb.
Your face and the tarmac
enjoy rounds of golf together.
You’re the nine pm doorbells
nobody wants to answer.
 
Get up.  ‘This time I’m finished’
carries the weight of a child’s
flatulence during hurricane season.
Your sincerity equals Ms. Pageant
confessing concern for anything at all. 
You are Pat Kenny without the charisma.
 
Face up. You’re that important detail
which fails to download on a smart phone.
You are the ham and cheese sandwich
innocence pulverised into pavement.
You’re the ending to a long anticipated
TV series scrawled on a public toilet door.
 
You are a gift-wrapped Western present
           the Taliban would return. 

Vinny Glynn-Steed is an award winning poet from Galway. His debut chapbook Catching Air was published by Maytree Press in December 2020.