NEW POEM: My Town

My Town

A Poem by Simon Clark

The high street has been resurfaced more times than I’ve had hot dinners,

The brickwork replaced with identical brickwork,

Then once again, but with fluorescent strip-lighting sunk into the floor – in blue,

The dimming lights highlight the overspill of fast-food detritus,

A rat runs past the empty shop with circus posters glued to the door and a “closing down” sign from 5 years ago,

The hanging baskets gazing down like baubles on a dying tree.

The banal bars are scattered with hardened drinkers and beginners,

Quicksand jobs tick over, to the dole, like clockwork,

The sun hits off the Travelodge reflective glass exposing the grubby hue,

The crumbling shell is not without its charm, but creaks like arthritis,

The concrete imposition of the devastated mall and a shopping centre that lost its lustre long ago,

The streetlights glint with electricity that’s bursting to be free.

Familiarity readily breeds and births its child, contempt,

Suffocating like resting in a plastic bag,

Only to be ignored; swallowed by the lemming-like crowd of cut-price shoppers,

They dash by the Big Issue tout with faux-middle-class position,

That same snooty-nosed peroxide blonde with borrowed fashion can be seen begging for love on any Saturday curb,

The charity box rattlesnake-shakes with the pennies of the poor.

The plastic poppies adorning the trees disguise a town unkempt,

The arts, unsupported, left to rot, turned to scrag,

Crimes left to fester and thrive under the watchful eye of the restful coppers,

Everyone’s welcome but your soul is the payment for admission,

You’re in Bromley (twinned with Neuwied) where difference is a dare; mould to established moulds, the foundations do not disturb,

The dregs of addiction turning the pure to lower than the floor.

And yet…

When all is said and done and I wander between the Market Square (where Costa stains the scenery) and the station where Taxi’s wait in vain,

I wouldn’t change it, this dystopia, for all the rice in China (as the man at the end of the bar often says) not for one lone grain.

© Simon Clark