Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.
A. Huxley
Britain is a nation of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and - as George Orwell said - old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.
J. Major
*
Actual slogans around our heads
detuned to tearing a buzzword
instead given to imagine
what kind of country is this?
class fatalised Bowellism
& the chud of words spoken to deaf air
there are Steinways to follow
& seraphs on Brooke street,
what survives so prospects could gaze
straight ahead over the water
with you between thawed gurgles
on Dover’s edge
a cell of one together.
*
“And yet .”
Wend hypnopædia dead omnipresent
the city lights of ‘heart-centred’ offices
& County Hall scoured to Shrekworld
in the viewing corridors
the mystagogy of WeWork
my heart is dumb boracic
latchless sleep bilked what really matters
is eaten on the scale of need,
binds itself in a midnight tabulation
over spitting the concrete
new Classical macroeconomics
new Classical tiny glass beads
powered this small & weak dreaming fields
at night the background to work
every child to thrive
by the exalted lights
& season mood boxes
in a purpling midnight hue.
*
Permanent mobilisation
of blind genetic competition
people & people
or endless re-enactments
of ritual power-plays
ancestral environments
plugging austerities in the wren
the Urban White Paper Urban Renaissance
BioMed Centre identikit corporate detailing
quoin metal black bile
to my scrying door plate
mixed-use the sugar pill
Marina developments
micro segregation blood fielding
in treacle-like gloss paint;
plastic art planted in concrete
business district winding down
Era Two is more optimistic,
spec boasting holes a ‘Transversal Space’,
Post-Good in Quango fortified,
stock-brick-clad
ground-floor blast walls
scratching the edge forevermore.
*
The underclass discussed on mumsnet
Do we have one? Why?
Who or what is responsible?
When did it all go wrong?
answers on a postcard
wiping off at the diadem floodlights
another collared plinth
wriggle out in virid pilule seedbed
Russell Group firebrands
in spirited Rosewood Calf Leathers
kicks me down
this gangway job pissed town
is yours in a sports bags,
you can have it!
*
Outside Langham Place
sans consentement in Corsham stone
the nuptials of god
& god the Stone beneath volutes
Justice 4 Fathers Spidermans
half suspended with a daughter’s guitar
‘In the Name of The Father’ by Bono,
the Trafalgar Groves, the Victory Footprint
a gala of dystopian domes
Logan's Run of my desire for wrecking
in multi-use pause areas
frozen stars! on the lips a Levelling Up,
a song for rent & village culture
the economic pie everywhere
& for everyone, not re-slicing it
Teesworks in Redcar,
& sell it these new clusters
will be our Fourth Industrial Revolution
in Sunderland headwinds in the past
spread thin through Freeports,
Enterprise Zones Super-deductions
a 10-point code of conduct
Londinium vapour trails
wrenched quiet a dream covered nothing
again its boiling More In Common
& nobodies safe, the wedded nodes
the diminutions & you eat them
in the Giant Needery
little britain with wards tested
gladi/haemophilia + binos
the heart dystopia
while the wind was playing,
glided away images
evenings golden hour draped
above winged griffin ramps
the shallow end of Bullism
& you face it in your head
Nomura & Merrill Securities metals.
