“The Dinosaurs went extinct because they did not have a space program.” Arthur. C. Clarke.


I stand here at the checkout line
“Paper or plastic?” the young Clerk states
Unthinking and so innocent!
(No knowledge of the bag’s long fate).


They were big and wondrous Birds
With flashing feathers, wild and free!
The World was theirs. Forever so
From Hill to Dale, and Swamp to Sea!


For Sixty-Million-Dragon years!
They danced and fought and sexed and loved!
Knew nothing of dark, deadly rocks
Hurled from the sizzling skies above!

To them it was forever NOW;
Tended their Young and won the skies.
The few who saw the bad thing fall
Gazed calmly with unknowing eyes.


How suddenly their chirps were lost!
One moment live, the next all gone!
In but a blink the Birds were dead!
We Mammals lived and carried on!


Flash forward back ten million years.
Big Boxes are our Planet’s fads.
Big Bird’s goo, just auto food!
Just gas and oil and plastic bags!

Early every morning
Swooping squawking birds
Leave their liquid calling cards
Before the street has stirred
Where people in their track suits
Drink to overload
And stagger to their rented rooms
Down Blackpool’s Crystal Road

Where the road sweeper doesn’t sweep
And no one comes to call
Except for black clad bailiffs
Who come to take it all
The druggies & the drinkers
Share the one abode
To take away the misery
Of life on Crystal Road

The seedy little B&B’s
Fight to rent their rooms
Sharing each other’s bathroom
Sharing each other’s gloom
Screaming kids and drunken louts
Your eardrums will explode
It’s a sure way into madness
When you stay on Crystal Road

The wind blows like a hurricane
The rain falls like a flood
Washing away the *****
The debris & the blood
The hens are ****** the stags are too
They’re all in party mode
Throwing up and having ***
In rooms on Crystal Road

A *******’s bar called ‘Paradise’
At one end of the street
Full of seedy little men
And women with no teeth
A food bank at the other
Feeds those with no abode
But even they refuse to stay
In a house on Crystal Road