Multiplastic

Once upon an age ago, I was good at faces On the theme of two eyes, a nose and a mouth Every minor variation Loaded me with information The width of a forehead, the curl of a brow The space between eyes, their colour and lean The curve of a nose, the height of a cheek The cracks on a lip, the angle of a chin Would resolve into instant recognition No time between seeing and knowing Only the moment Only, ‘it’s you’ But back then, I saw fewer faces Now walk across the college quad Now I look out across the exam room cohort Now I stand by the theatre door and take tickets From a crashing sea of faces The fashionable faces trying to fit in too hard The empty faces whose minds are elsewhere The normal faces who think normality is a virtue Expressive faces of those who know it is not The old faces, desiccated by living The baby faces as yet unscathed The overdrawn parent, the acne-pixelated teenager The wild and free in jumble sale Max Factor And all blend, all merge,...

Philippe Gaulier 4 th March 1943 to 9 th February 2026 The Queers will carry your coffin Tripping over their own ribbons and feet The legless will dance in your honour And dwarves will stand on chairs To poke God in the eye for you. We will mix the filth of the gutter With our own face-paint, With the lights of stars In a red nose And dump it clumsily into your grave Ashy to ashes, trashy to trashes We will cheer the eulogy delivered by the demented Stuff balloons down our trousers to make our arses huge And clap without using our hands Bon voyage, notre monstre magnifique We freaks will play at saluting you. February 2026