Snaps

Snaps

When Snaps moved in across the street
we ignored him for a week.
He liked to suddenly stand up at events,
announce his dissatisfaction with audience reaction.
In the bars at half time, we watched him approach groups,
mostly ones whose attention had started to droop.
They mistook him for a magician, in his too tight red trousers,
offering to hold their dull dove imaginations for the break,
but when he just stood and stared
they school disco side-stepped,
straw clunked the cubes in their cranberry mixers,
and thought of other times they felt that sort of skin scratch,
eating Pret clubs on the phone while passing a homeless guy,
picking a point on the tube floor to avoid
the eye of an old lady in need of a seat,
using a TV programme on domestic waste
as background static to fill up a too quiet dove grey lounge.