Arts of the Earth
This afternoon on the waste strewn black scree
Of a slag heap on the mountains high slope
I hear a plovers call in the far distance
I’ve come here each day for a week
Photographing the way that plants re-colonise
The barren ground of frost shattered shale.
Somehow a small yellow flower has emerged
Amongst the splinters of this barren mire
And life slowly returns to the black slope.
Soreness and observations
It was a small operation done quickly
Leaving the surgery I walked back
Through a town that looks and feels
As though it’s almost given up on itself
Was it eleven or twelve charity shops?
I counted amongst the Poundlands
Cash generators, betting shops
And discount off loaders of trash food
There’s an intersection of two roads
Where the dealers and drug users meet
Young men walking in that fast agitated way
Shouting to someone they could see
A couple of hundred yards away
They do that on their mobiles too
There is no intimacy in these conversation
And then there are the ball carriers
Men who walk through the streets
With a hand down the front of their trousers
Hanging on to their knob as if to reassure
Themselves that they are still a man
Then they go on to shake each others hands
Passers-by become involuntary participants
A passive invasion of blatant criminality
Then there are the men and women
On the detox programmes stick thin
Yellow skinned walking skeletons
Still looking edgy for the next deal
Today there is a new wave of men
Released from jail to the local hostel
Talking out loud about a stolen credit card
Quick use it three times thirty quid no more
Before the card is shut down by the bank
So they stand at the hole in the wall
Looking furtive looking around
Staring people down in the queue
It’s convenient that there are three cash points
On each corner they walk to each one
With that swinging wide shouldered gait
The swaggering fronting up
The tell-tale sign of a jail inmate
It’s easy to forget too that they
The men and women I observe
The flotsam and jetsam of a wrecker’s yard
Are not the cause of society’s problems
Of the fracture between the wealthy and poor
But the result of the damage that’s been done
By a political cause that proudly pronounced
“There is no such thing as society”
And so many other throw away lines
That made sure we knew our place.
