Arif's Legs

Arif's Legs

Flip-flops smack hard baked sand,
the rythmn beneath the chatter of cheap silk sarongs,
long, flower strewn shorts and ludicrously loud beach shirts.
Rolled up towels and draw strung, bright yellow bags
swing at the hips of idle gods
in search of their own briefly served heaven.
Pink legs, Raybans and factor twenty-one
amble down a scrubby path that winds away
from tea and toast and crusty cereal bowls.
Cracked earth and spare boned weeds
line the path that passes quiet, bare tables
in a yawning Nepalese restaurant,
where lizard tails bask in the early morning shimmer.
Arif swings out of the shade of a scratch thin bush
and waits in the sun on a corner,
where silent morning-bright bars meet the path to the beach.
He squats, with a smile on his face,
under the needle shade of thorns,
a spot for beggars and mange necked mongrels,
who lounge the day away and wait
for half finished meals and overflowing bins at dusk.
In the down draught of swaddled paunches
his limbs jut and break at right angles
so that he crawls on one bent leg and one smashed arm.
His left hand bends impossibly backwards.
His right arm, left free and palm straight, is raised,
dirt creased, under the blue bright sky.
Flint brown eyes glint as he smiles
and he tells the passing lords of plenty
that he loves Manchester United.

Arif, born straight but apprenticed at birth
to the breaker of bones,
this talking human spider,
spouts names from concrete terraces
half a million years away.
His limbs were plucked from labour by busy hands,
broken and set to drag and scrape the crust of the earth,
to plough the scrag end change of life.

A paunch walks by, sun glasses perched on the top of his nose
so that he doesn't see, focussing on the palm roofs of beach
shacks
and a bottle of Bud.
A sandal, new and bright under the holiday dust
aims at and misses a gold furred, yapping backside
that is far too practised in the art of surviving.
Heads shake,
pity wells in the eyes of these idle gods,
and coins drop at Arif's good foot as, muttering,
they cry crocodile tears into the Ganges
for the shame of foreign soil that once was forever&;#8230;

Under the spindle bower,
with dogs scratching their arses and the sores behind their ears
Arif waits&;#8230;
Counting the slap and slide of fat foot falls,
bouncing laughter off of the low bar walls,
judging the moment when the web strings bow,
Arif waits&;#8230;
Waits for the discomfited look of tourists,
waits for the sharp hand of some loving father,
the breaker of bones,
to count the worth of hours away.
Seeing colours emerge from the rising haze
He shuffles out onto the path,
Smiles, beams, catches the colour of money
and tugging the strings,
declares his eternal love for Aston Villa.