Twenty-five years on and it is still
A sinkhole, a gravity well of the spirit
Sucking you in and down.
Fifteen million (on latest government estimates)
Processed every day. Every need catered,
Every diversion and entertainment except
A good and purposed life.
The price is high. Worth paying when
I was young and fit but now I see
Only the tawdry gloss on the grimy
Dirty yellow brick, the drifting garbage
And hordes of desperate youth in dingy streets
Behind the tourist’s managed realities.

It was always a young place, a time
Of decrepit pubs and grubby bedsits,
Foul weather, booze and pretty pills;
Of wandering the streets as once again
The inadequate salary fails. Young warriors,
Hunter-gatherers in pursuit of excitement,
Predating large and willing herds of
Pale and silly little plump girls
With softround squeezed up tits, freckles,
Frizzed hair, skirts and shirts as loose
As they were let you get them pissed while
They squeaked and giggled as you groped
And poked only to complain too late,
Sitting in your bed, their bed, a car,
Clutching a sheet, a blouse to their chest
You bastard how could you and what if…?
And you disgusted by their false modesty
Neglected to call them because after all
There was a good supply of fond girls
In any nearby bar waiting for their turn
To play that game in some vain hope
That it will be different, this time.

That was their thrill and danger in the city,
Hundred miles from home and free to
Share a life with two or three
Provincial pigeons just the same.
Go to college or to work behind a counter
And dally with a squalid life for a year
Or two. To tut about each other’s faults
In that ‘She’s soooo wicked’ way until
They got discarded once too often or
Impregnated like the fecund little puddings
That they were and married or slunk back
In disgrace to the semi-detached family
In the town you’ll never visit to settle down,
Down, down in hiding with nothing left
But naughty memories of drunken-suave
And spotty youths grunting over them
In the back of a car, a park bench, a bed
If they were lucky or even a phone booth
With a busted light one night to get
Out of the rain and meet the urge god help me,
Panties round the ankles again and that nice
Warm feeling deep inside for now which is
Almost worth the risk until
The disappointment sets in again.

I was no Romeo or Rochester,
No desperate girl’s dark and dangerous dream
Of love or passion. I could be quick and funny
And that was enough; loaded with
False confidence and worthy of my share
Of bouncy, squeaking chicks. Provincial girls
Were easy, even for less recent refugees.
The real city girls were tough and skinny,
More prized, won only on their own terms,
A very different game.

I wish them well, hope they’re sitting in
Their suburban kitchens with tea and cake,
Children grown as they wait for a kind
Reliable husband to return. It is their offspring,
Pudgy youth now roiling impatient around me,
Returning salmon-like for their turn at the light
And to echo their parent’s doom.
Endless cycles of excitement and fond regrets.
And are any my accidental get, I wonder
And shudder briefly at the thought before
I recover my sense. No, even nice Catholic girls
Got terminations in that time at the mill.