What place is this? A quaint name out of sight,
where the future once was better.
Just spitting distance beyond the by-pass,
at fag-end of a long night’s leaving party,
Friday Street is getting some kip.
Friday Street, that whimsy English fiction:
all thatch and whitewashed local stone,
wisteria, greenhouses, and village GPO.
Where children sport Start-rite sandals
and jovial bigots recall The Woodentops.
At arm’s length, lies a further Friday Street
hidden, up gated drives, in shrubbery.
Tennis court, pool, bedrooms enough
for no end of minimum pay Romanians,
fully furnished and tax exempt.
Friday Street once more is left on the corner:
a one-armed sofa spews its cheap synthetic guts
like candyfloss, while scrote kids spray abuse.
Tin city Health Centre, all out of staff,
is boarded up. The reek of livelihoods pissed away.
Flags become curtains, not waving but drawn.
Three threadbare crosses, each on each;
no sharing skies concrete with foreign stars.
Stop. Don’t hang this sour self-portrait.
When Saturday comes, with croissant and espresso,
I filter sneering column inches, then
over my shoulder look: the past’s already here.
vii – x. 2016
