All the forms & images
in the world can be revoked
remembering your childhood
Sir James Ritblat,, your mothers disappearance
near a Hertfordshire airfield
agitatrixs hurdling a 7 per cent annual cut
to the laxey billfroth with long memories
and then there were none but fathers
decimals lie in bed late at night watching old comedies
such as Only Fools and Horses,
Porridge and Carry On films.
“That’s my humour,” Senior Ritblat blurts.
“I’m much happier going to sleep with a smile on my face.”
“It isn’t the same.
Back then we had Tiny…”
The adviser's silky smooth voice tailed off
waves two fingers at British Land, PLC holy-stricken
corporate governance
Buildings are bricks and mortar,
there to be bought and sold fleet-footed
the drooping floors its sinking chorus of
drinking champagne from silver goblets, heads
scenting blood, descaling promised
homes to nothing again
like under heaven dominated by
clubbable tycoons
on balance in the sorry ground
wasted tokenism
our wrecker is very, very busy,
dinner speeches
parterres aflame so much we have to seek
to put the community at the heart of the process
and are continuing to engage proactively
in consultation with the local peoples
and the whole themepark trembling
to get living or be forbade
manic thieves bind dewy
rents all the brightest culled darkly
Sir Michael Caines in ‘sinkhole estates’
riven to the spot
a luminous body of
silicone & polyol resin
turned by currents of light
a neurotically protected citadel
of the undead
‘it takes a man in a tweed suit
5 and half seconds to fall from the
top of Big Ben to the ground
in the area I once called home
frequented by meths-drinking weirdos’
& so clearly the tariff of
good faith will be deferred
to the imaginary children of the future,
sometime later all rolled in primrose
under broiling suns Zone Oneland rainsoaked
pieces of amenities fall out
one panel type a structural spandrel
under the windows
laid horizontal a decorative facing
no local governments, no aesthetics no democracy
twelve roads at once
you’re dead pinched and minuscule
a hill with car park lights the aluminum balconies
stapled fields of dreams
industrial units
a hill the feeling on cantilevered platforms
to view something like a glass atria
inside Big Yellow Self-Storage
big sheds plastic-clad buildings
shaped like a Rubik’s Cube a steel column with twinkling lights
that can be controlled by text message
skylines that stay the same dozens of pipes neon-lit
and topped by flares
the medium of inculcation
the feeling of slues of
Ritblat’s daughter spawn
everything is changing 18 years
my eyes began to startle
happy in pose
light bulbs draped through the grounds
of the party
live camels, monkeys, Vintner commodes FTSE100
a tent with a gold sign beaming ‘Ritblat Family Circus’
butlers to cater for every whim like beating frogs to death
in the midsummer evenings
remembering the feeling
on that river the view was undying
under the elder tree
a tendered Michael McIntyre on hand to provide jokes:
That most elusive of creatures.
A right-of-centre millennial breaks over
a Non-virtue signaller.
Zero snowflake credentials.
English Identitarian.
I crash into a pile of roasted scallops, white port, garlic
a bouquet of variegated tulips
grasped by an enormous hand jutting from a pedestal speaks
by radio to the likewise disembodied voice of Sir Michael Caine
sub-Pendereckian clicks and drones come from above me
“the people” aren’t even real;
they’re weaponized figments
in forgotten places spelling out vapour trails
spectre there are perks in chains of lead
no alternative
under hannibal house
no alternative
under tempest
no alternative
under napping fabrics
for every whispered word a body lies
in a boules pitch in fruit cages in stables
in tennis courts and underground swimming pools
& was always in
ultimatums graph as it marrows to starry blue
with camshafts to shine a S.A.D. lamp on
I Cry When I Laugh it is that
or NIMBYs zonal planning hegemonies
drawn out under zoning
or regulatory arrangements
featureless trees are broken,
establishes Nue Ground
at the heart of what we do
a life, strategic planning
all opposing broken pledges
down One the Elephant
with english brick, this bloodshift unnamed,
face-to-face on retail chains
and privatised plazas into manja line
coated with powdered glass
Best Residential High-rise Architecture
at the 2016 International Property Awards
I feel a certain pang inside my chest
see a hole as big
as tenpence m the glass.
Names emerge. And the pain grows specific ,
localised , somewhere around the heart,
or the stomach, or the lungs
kettering a sky lounge, 45th floor
with a bar and kitchen co-working space
accessible to residents only
Sir Michael Caine's voice:
‘the sun also rises as an act of habit
or estimating worth during an interspace
of habit estimating better times
when the flames spread radially
around petals and all were alight,
stems rose slowly from the gaping
floorboards peeling upright
with a single massive flame
a sacred gasping light
clap went around the anvils of my tears,
The country I love is bleeding to death.’
His voice croaked oncemore:
‘Look, look everyone was paid in golden sovereigns
would sleep well at night
no one was ill or died
the weather was perfect
and you could get 200 pints of bitter
for a quid in a bushel the English National Dance
was still Boomps a Daisy, the stream was
temporarily drained and filled with flowers! oh
& our boys never left home
they worked hard and made do with nothing
Sixtus Dominic Boniface would hold the annual coconuts shy
we would all be burning the European Maritime Safety Agency manifesto.
The country I love is bleeding to death!’
