Thin Veneer

Around the pool, the young boy lumbered,
Shouting gaily, unencumbered,
Though his legs were singly-numbered,
Still he laughed with boyish ease.
And as I woke from idle napping,
On my sunbed, sunshine trapping,
I saw his shorts leg idly flapping,
Flapping lamely in the breeze.

On his hands and foot he bounded,
Like the letter M quite rounded,
And I watched him, most astounded,
As he stumbled on all threes.
And as my peace was interrupted,
And my pleasant dreams disrupted,
A fleeting, savage thought erupted,
Filling me with strong unease.

Why, while I am holidaying,
Far from normal everydaying,
Should this one-legg’d boy come straying,
Like a sudden, sharp disease?
I’m trying to escape reality
At this holiday locality,
Fleeing from the world’s brutality
And it’s tragic amputees.

Thus my mind, when pricked a little,
Gushed a waterfall of spittle
Through the shell, refined but brittle,
Shaped by civilised decrees.
Spewing forth, like gonorrhoea,
Through the flimsy, thin veneer,
Viscous, putrid and unclear,
Hidden for eternities.

And then I shivered, quite disgusted
At the way my mind, once trusted,
Could be, in an instant, rusted
By such selfish thoughts as these.
But my question, rashly tabled,
Begs which of us should be labelled
As the more obtuse, disabled –
The cripple or the ill-at-ease?