Everyone’s a mirror-puncher.
You smack and smack and smack
that glass until your knuckles rupture
in a crimson lake.
And then you keep on smacking, smacking,
past regard for pain.
You watch that mirror cracking, cracking,
with glass beneath your skin.
Your friends implore you, plead in horror,
“Please, for Christ’s sake, why?”
And then, “You fool! Just leave that mirror
alone!” they sternly cry.
“This life’s a brain-entangling struggle,
this world’s a complex place!
Consider that before you buckle
your image of your face!”
But still you smack with daft conviction
it cleanses and resolves,
until that mirror lies in fractions
and you can’t see yourselves.
You stumble backwards, blindly, bleeding
from wounds that will not heal,
with nothing to reflect the feeling
of mental overkill.
One pain-soaked empty day
I faced my mirror, lost, bewildered.
A good friend said to me,
“Your tears, my friend, should not be shouldered.
It’s wrong to stand up for yourself,
so punch that mirror! Ignore the omen!
Smash it like everyone else!
Apologise for being human!”
And so I punched that glass
in a frenzy of disgust and disorder,
my fists a peeling mess,
my good friend shouting, “Harder! Harder!”
I studied myself and said, “No.
I’d rather punch you, you self-righteous bastard.”
There ended my role in her show
as the good guy. Now I’ve been re-casted.
My dressing-room is wide,
with fairy-lights that blink and glimmer.
A stagehand fastens my tie
as I look fondly in my mirror
and think, “Can a stake through the heart
of a feeble and jealous emotional vampire
kill them? The target’s minute.
Perhaps just fry them on a bonfire.
