Sunday 7 September 2008

work (for national poetry week, which is coming up soon)


Metal hammered,

Glass blown.

Crystal flakes near

Drops of liquid steel

Dripping like dragon dribble.


Hammers pound, curving and shaping steel into chains

Anchoring

The titanic.

Dragging away the iceberg.

A cube cauterised by the heat of industry.

Dust abhors

A vacuum (cleaner).


A black

Country

And a grey town

Pounding, pounding, pounding

Ship-yard car-crash

Waves wash the bow.


Glass shards puncture steel plate.

Still steel still stolid.

Getting there, after a while.

Getting where?


Moving to india.

A call centre in Deli

A sweat stained sweatshop

Brown hands working on Armani.

Needle-stab, pin prick.

Bleeding thumb

Breath lost.

Eyesight blurs

Present obscured by visions of the past

Halcyon dazed.

Flat-caps hide flat heads.

Steel plated shoes clatter on cobbled streets back in the days

When a faggot was something you ate.

Once-Working class now on benefits

Benefiting who?


Tapping initials on mobile phones

Mushy peas

Mushy pays

Money payed through pin-numbers

A silicon chip in a Mexican arm.

A million cameras watch

The European dream.

Could inspire cold shudders

Down the spine.


A chain attached to an iceberg

(Fluoride soaked, intellectually stunted).

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