Cancer Man: Mud Face

The cancer man.
In an ice field.
In bare feet and a hospital robe.

On this bleak, misty, mizzley, January
Darkling afternoon
2.40pm light fading.
In waste ground between the River Aire and the Leeds Liverpool Canal.

Tangled trees, jaunty with billowing plastic.
Scrubby, muddy undergrowth.
Sharp, catching brambles in Sleeping Beauty proportions,
Snagged with paper coffee cups, rain faded chocolate bar wrappers.
Victorian post-industrial walling around a dangerous bend.

All is wet and black and failing.

Amidst this poisonous, piercing nature
a billboard erect against black branches and pewter winter sky.

On it the image of a lone man.

This dismal cancer poster has recently been set on fire.
Metal has buckled under the hoarding
The shape of the flames is sketched
In spectral shadows of soot.
Reaching points in rust red and charcoal black.

A glob of mud has been hurled at the man’s face
Obscuring it
and dribbling obscenely.
Framed by rot-blackened skeletons of winter trees.

Yes!
I exult.
Take that.
Thank you my friend with your random anger and box of matches.
Thank you passing stranger with your perfect rage kicking in the burned planks.
Thank you Good Samaritan with your boredom and frustration and accurate bowling arm.

This advertisement
destroyed by violent fire, made abject with clay,
is an exemplar of my own null fury
unexpressed.
Latent.
Dangerous.

Just wait.












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