I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them.
Lucian Freud
A stranger looks out of the mirror,
gritty truth replacing imagined self,
fair hair, blue eyes, soft skin
transformed by age.
He catches wrinkles, worry lines,
jowls and double chins I never knew,
liver spots that arrive in the night,
like devil’s thumbprints.
Yellow teeth, crooked beach groynes,
childhood antibiotics, rugby trophies,
the chipped crowned tooth centre stage,
its sickle border turning black.
Clear blue eyes, shrouded now,
cliff top brows, beetling over
an eroded coast, a chalk cliff
pounded by timeless seas.
The exclamation mark from eyes
to mouth, my mother’s property,
glows soft red from too much wine,
port, sherry and sweet Madeira.
Golden hair gives way to grey,
falls out in clumps, combed carefully
from front to back to hide
a pink parade ground.
The skin’s sallow tinge a legacy,
childhood jaundice, a death mask
in a yellow shirt, coffin ready,
waiting reheating.
Keep writing 