You can’t go Daviding your younger or your
older self. Like lightspots or like light-
spun proto-Pokemon phantasmagoria,
they’re seen but can’t be lined up in your sight.
Still, author snaps allow a kind of conflict –
Bloodaxe back-of-book ones all the more,
framed as they are
like the portraits in Streetfighter II’s
selection screen, the poet in repose,
fierce as any convict.
The older Herbert sizing up the younger:
quite the quarrel for the gossipmonger!
Though photos, at the same time, seem quite brittle,
like moulted exoskeletal remains,
out of which we climb, reborn, and bristle,
or ghosts – bottled, flower-pressed into stains.
Well, look, I caught a couple – who you gonnacall?
Bad Shaman Blues and Cabaret McGonagall
slotted back to back in my bag/sling,
two Herberts nose to nose – two foes, one wit,
like how ‘lo and hi mean the same thing
and yet are opposite.