Class distinctions in England have always been a matter of higher feeling than national honour, the matter of a feverish but very private debate.
Evelyn Waugh
Painted pink from pole to pole
the oubliette Drop City
boardroom stilts accidental vistas
shuttering on The Boom’s last word
ideas for a footbridge abiding Glencores
greenwashing & the final Fatal Tree
is made from copper-nickel alloy
bling encased for sheer profligacy,
enclaves glottalling Long gelded
estuary unfencibles
for king’s head
to keep the land inviolate
the yob-ends natter
plant life cubic grey
& over-reach of imperium
in open lapwing
wet asphalt as it beautifies out
all the quiet zones
from faces on the job search
for a hope bigger than a boxed in visage
you bend to gapping stars
that rime goes opaque in
air of ruckling counterpanes
to rent-off this mortised rim
the city allies
peels away under Leadenhall
antiquated think-tanks welch
a Union Jack on piled biscuit tins,
from Cherry-Garden a last sigh of
mobbed lettings nothing much
left now but a saturnalia bough
as high as uninhabitable
zoned backward
& The London Plan
where are my eyes
bending the secret parts of us
faces turned grey ‘no-fault’ evictions
under section 21
‘I just want my property back’,
on this laissez-faire
bonfire night opportunity area digs
itself rond-points; overwork death
in royal parks surviving
a tortured lie link by link
jerked star-draught bewitching
the stimulus lament,
pale white ash
around this husked
perimeter of wework
mystagogy Aviation house
the of downdraught
a horizon keysteps from
cotched bramble heads
still gripping the lamina
of sinecures
reading what little legal entitlement
of this unleavened cake we have,
squeezing the plughole
pauperism soliloquy
you have been forgotten
In a One Nation Britain
washed hollow lob
rentiers breathe shrill
over a culture of dependency
shitflickers & the phenomenon of humanisation –
nightfall ambuscade
tangled in the rigging
of it is widely flown ownership
a stand-alone flag
shielding acrid vexillum
morphology made concrete
they stand forming now
all the while my heart undoes
nap-pods in the dark vertical gardens
remember County Hall scoured to Shrekworld
remember countermanding last minute
memos remember the viewing corridors
& its rare indivisible Lightshard
bilging over capital
panorama risoed until a dim flicker
a termination of hope
hybrid glass hill-edged,
jack-spiked brownfields again.
