Adrian Wiggins

Minor Life Crisis

Like clowns between towns in touring
circuses rehearsing handbook gestures

from the old days, your sad best
basis for a readymade bravura against

bewitching formlessness acquired
one tea-time (and which loomed

since that last lopsided visit
to the sly-grogging old duck rugged up

in the pre-fab three-stage retirement complex
parked out on the rural/urban fringe) is a plan

to hit the pachinko parlour on the Tokyo layover,
then a credit plunge at the white goods

mega mart, then a plangent trailing off
to early-onset shouting and raving;

an overzealous dad on the under
six sideline—kick the ball, Johnny,

kick the... You know there is no known
equivalent of poetry about poetry

in any Olympic sport, not even wrestling.

Quick, give me the ball!