The empty buildings that surround the concrete, hole encrusted
patch of ground, reflect thought of just how poor
the area has become.
The first great depression of the twenty-first century
claims all in this northern town by the Mersey
and the Sunday car boot sale, a few stalls and a van with steaming
piles of bacon, has become the highlight of the week for many.
It is the chance to meet up and sell the remains of a home,
a fractured mess in which no-one talks of
Would I dare believe they would contemplate
this cul de sac once more?
That I would be looking over my shoulder and listening on edge
for the sound of an alarm
and fear the general panic
of a population gripped in ice stone terror
and wondering just who
they would protect and survive.
Of course the idea the propagated
of hiding under doors is absurd,
it was only a practical way of burying the dead
and now they want us to learn D.I.Y. again
If he is not yet dead
then perhaps he might be better off being so,
for the passage of time ticks slowly in his direction.
Comforting words as the fate of his future is decided
in crumbling office blocks and in the same dusty relics
of men who plot and call coup
in a world of insane potential
and irrational market forces deliverance.
These same market forces that made him God,
now turn and bite their master of illusion
hard and nip, drawing blood, it dribbles waywardly
If it helps you classify me, then by all means tie
an armband with a yellow star around my biceps
and shoot me down with a ravenous bully boy glee upon
your myopic thousand yard stare, which in reality matches the
colour of your eyes as they glaze over as I answer your questions
as I think of the day when I will forgive you.
It will burn you alive and if it helps in your suffering,
I shall wear armbands all the way down my naked torso
I introduced the young twenty something to myself at seventeen
and for good measure, them both to me at thirty.
At forty-four I sat back and watched them try to make
small talk, idle chit chat, but not the hint of interrogation
that should be imagined when stuck in a room with your future at sixty,
pompous, arrogant, full of fear and trepidation,
and your ten year old self, who acts pretty much the same.
The glaring glances and accusing stares from the seventeen year old
The Cuckoo sings as bright as any bird
and its forest chattering drawl
draws many mouths to smile
as the long awaited Spring peeks its head
from around Winter’s closely gathered shawl.
The odious nature of its parenting skills make the Cockroach
shiver with nerves pumping prehistoric blood
and alien indestructibility. It shakes its scale like protrusion
and it sniffs loudly and the Cuckoo hears from above the trees
soaring in search of a sucker to warm its eggs.
The marble eggs carefully laid by the sparrow, destroyed, turned over, damaged
I have never been a dedicated follower of fashion,
the committed hunter of trends or the seeker of the inner circle.
I couldn’t care less for style unless it’s of my own making
and the latest thing, the craze of Dutch Tulip, just passes me by.
I love my team but won’t buy into the ethos that sits there now,
I loved them when were so bad we were great and being against type
When others around me supported the local three teams,
and then later the likes of the team from Salford, Arsenal or the beautiful
I have never been at anyone’s beck and call,
I will tug no lock nor doff my trilby to no one,
I will admire in great abundance but I will not lick your arse clean
nor allow you to make me feel like I am worthless;
for I am not your whipping boy.
I place the smoky glass in front of me as I wish it to tempt me,
inside I want it to take me to a place where
you cannot reach me, because the last thing I want
Concrete Dutch Tulips are all the rage in the city by the river
as they trade for increasing vast fortunes
that feed the bloated economy figure, warts popping pus
and oozing, squeezing blood all over the dust potted road.
The second city of Empire, the anti-capital, the gateway
to a new world, has more and more concrete tulips
than is healthy as the modern bubble shimmers
in the March sun and speculators look for another
square block in which tulips will thrive.
Speculating on a future that could change with a slip of a pen
You are my guide, from the womb to the soil in which
my cremated remains will hug and embrace with the same deep thought
as when I was a child in which you were my teacher,
when I was the teenage boy in whose arms I wanted to hold you with
and kiss you gently,
to the middle aged man in which I have become
and in which you are the one I strive
to be equal to, you are my guide.
From the grandmother with unseen feminist principals,