“Grabbems”
He dreams, some nights, that he’s seen the life
he’s always wanted – sitting, waiting for him,
in the bottom of one of those machines you always find
in the doorways of the seaside arcades:
There, nested down in the glass fishtank, amongst
the plush puppies, pink elephants and Winnie-the-Poohs,
a perfect facsimile of himself in miniature – dressed
in a tailored suit of eloquence and possibility;
He dreams of the girl he’s with, pointing, exclaiming,
in her petulant voice: “Get me that one!” and he – so eager
to provide for her a life that’s a worthy prize: a souvenir
of himself that she can walk with, tucked beneath her arm -
is feeding twenty-pence-piece after twenty-pence-piece
into a ravenous coinslot, gripping the little joystick – watching
through tears of desperation, as the palsied mechanical claw
pulls numb against his wishes, like a damaged nerve;
a torn ligament between intention and effect: over and over
he tries, thwarted each time in his dream, as in a life in which
he has never quite been able to get a firm grasp
on himself…
