Beyond Cineworld
There’s a point of aspiration
A spike of hope stretching
For its slice of sky.
To its left a pile of pink
Victoriana seems to rest upon
Its own future,
A strip of street-level charity shops
Forming its foundations.
And everywhere Spring elbows its way in.
A junkie shuffles to Morrisons to beg
From shoppers with a fresh lightness in his step.
A couple in mobility scooters
Stop to exchange a kiss
Outside the denture repair shop
Just as they did in those smoky
Years when Atlee made
Such palates public property.
Two council workers bright in orange
Overalls silently signal
Danger, but their caution is casual.
A young lad regrets his lack of a classical education
When his first tattoo – “Mam: In Memoriam”
Gets him a skelped ear’ole
From a mother who remains aggressively alive.
Across the car park where the burned down clocktower
Once commanded imperious sprawling Co-op City,
A pigeon plops a pat of its philosophy on the hubris of a Porsche,
Then flaps a desultory wing over the vape shop
Curving away towards the pole-priapic gentlemen’s lounge.
Eggs and bacon blend with the Chinese herbalist’s mysteries
On the raw breeze,
Whilst vagabonds of scant repair
Hustle in and out of Wilkos
To spruce and polish winter away
With all the sad dust of those they lost in the dark.
.
Stephen Linstead
Picture Nick Victor
.