(And as promised last week, here’s the third poem this month by brilliant Geraint Jonathan-Leila)

he was supernobody

a provincial jack

big on words

loaded with them

styled himself half-life

spun a tired line in self-deprecation

& all the while no self there

played phantom

(with a nod to phantoms everywhere)

on the offchance

phantoms don’t play themselves

in the popular imagination

being too absent abstracted

altogether too phantomlike

the world seemed

& those in it seemed unaware of it

seemed unaware of it that is

supernobodies can spot these things

the faces in a face

the suffering animal’s laughter

the engendering of toads in a petty dispute

being nobody helps

(makes anyone possible)

& with a wife & three kids 80 miles north

there was nothing for it but robes & wigs

& swords & the art of being somebody else

the word-load heavy but the money good

nobody par excellence

one shakescene of a country

disguised as himself

provincial jack

big on words