This is a poem of imaginative observation.  In other words this is a result of my scribbling as I am drinking my post swim cup of tea.  Most of the notes I write are banal in the extreme - but I continue in the fond hope that 'something' will come from a sort of mini-freewrite.
     The inspiration for this poem was a young lad kicking a ball by himself on an empty enclosed football/basketball outdoor court.
     He seemed (to me) to have all the stereotypical teenage angst writ large in his dress and movements and so I watched, in what I realise now was a slightly voyeuristic - or, as I like to term it, 'poetic' way - as his time in the leisure centre ball court played out.
     I was fascinated by the fact that the arrival of a group of kids, about his age, made no difference to them or him: they set about playing football and completely ignored him, as he did them.  And so on.
     Eventually I saw the beginnings of a poem and I have been working on it since.
     I like the title!  I toyed with the idea of using capitals for each of the words and eventually decided against it, as I did the idea of using hyphens, so the title is as it is!
     There are elements in this poem that I have played around with, but I think that it is time for a period of reflection, and time to put the poem 'out there'.
     I am still not convinced by the Classical references, but I think the poem gains from them.  At the moment.  The section in italics is another area where reflection may well make a change.  The ending of the poem, seems to me to make connections throughout the piece, but, again that is something that I will need to return to after time.
     In the scale of things, I think you have to admire a poem which makes a literary case for using the words, 'butt plug' in a constructive way!  I hope!

One man football

Unpeopled space is emptier

when you’re the only person there;

a team of one, with no CG effects

to make you multitudinous.

He kicked the ball, each sullen

Sisyphean punt too hard for

truthfulness, but sounding large

enough in that court’s silence

by percussion on the Perspex, chain-links,

wood, to fracture barriers.

He dressed in scooped-out,

stolen sexiness (drop armhole vest

un-filled by adolescent skinniness)

and blazoned, not with conventional

rejection via jagged leaves,

but with Nihilistic chic:

a shield of white convexity;

eye-empty sneer above

high puffy cheeks; sardonic smile;

angelic wing moustache, and

butt-plug goatee stuck beneath

a thin, tight mouth. 

                       An elegance.

Not comedy nor tragedy, but

disconcerting – just like the lad’s

defiant hair, so tidily en brosse.

Three young, ungainly Graces

drift uncertainly on on-line skates

in line and hand in hand in strict

descending order of their height.

No apples, but a weaving dance

that links us all in their erratic

movement’s thread that could

be broken by a single stone.

Then others came and emptied him

from emptiness.  He went and sat,

Achilles sulking, back against the

hangman’s posts, cross-legged,

enforced spectator in a sport

that he was not allowed to join.

Unmoving.

            All except his head.

That turned in wary observation

as if he could, but did not want

to see.

I do not know what wearing a shirt with the 'Anonymous' face on it means to a young kid.  How many political ideas does such a person have - or is the face merely a design element in a cool shirt?  It used to be that a single representation of a leaf of pot, looking like a funkier graphic of the Canadian maple leaf was enough to set the older generation frothing at the mouth.  But hash is so passé nowadays that it barely manages to get recognition let alone an outraged response.  the 'Anonymous' Guy Fawkes face is something which is more provoking and more resonant.  I think.

I think the force of the poem is contained in the last stanza - and I am still working out what I think I meant with it!