Sebastian Schloessingk

     BOY OWN PROGRESS

Men’s inner city muscle gym leg days
are rumoured to be much shirked.
Everyone wants the pecs, sleevebustout
biceps. Anyhow legs are known to
be less responsive (and calves often not

at all) to the onslaught of the laggard
sweating self in the pavement-peer-through
glass dungeon of machines. ‘That boy’s
a bit fat’ - I indicated
a small figure with gibbous armour

in a CBBC animation.
‘No, he’s not!’ the reply, shot back.
‘He’s a knight. Knights are never fat.’
Cage-fighting, kick-texting, where it’s at.
There’s been a step-up in stabbiness

too, whereby the usual 2D
Loser! sneer - launched at the hapless
with index and thumb at 90º -
gets a third dimension L blast via
the middle finger. Hand usage, ever

developing: no actioner,
no thriller would dream of someone
checking the pulse of someone motionless
as formerly at the wrist. Has to be,
for the gumshoe citizen (muscle bulk

tamed by coat) down on one knee, lightly
the finger pair to the side of the throat
of key players found streetfallen or desk-slumped.
‘I was like result.’ This from boy walking just
behind in the dark of the cold, fortified

people stream skirting a Samuel-Palmerish
church, quitting the field of fireworks. To cap
his meticulous ‘I was like’, ‘She was
like’ account of a conversation
(or stichomythia) with.