Beat-Up Old Car
Vastly under-appreciated possession
In dull blue, a MK1, no less, with original rust
Inside lingering scents of Exchange and Mart
top-notes of WD-40 and miscellaneous mix tapes

A car like this gets into your life
in lumpy knuckle-barking unsubtle ways,
stays there in subtle ones

That long drive back to Yorkshire
in the quintessential exemplar
Clutch cable snaps.
****** and Crap.

Hardly helpful but can be accommodated
with enough thought
rough though it is
on starter motor
and nerves whenever
anticipatory powers inadequate
and we are forced
to a complete red-light stop

Brakes dodgier, exhaust noisier
than ideal or legal
Gender-ambiguous
elderly tyres flirt outrageously with slick tarmac
Showing their canvas underwear
and male-pattern baldness

Keeping this unstable, unsafe, unreliable
ultimately essential lump of metal
moving and on the road
is a fine art

Engaging, fluid and intense art;
The Clash and The Specials
Costello and The Cure in support

A distraction then
getting hauled over by plod
somewhere near Bury St. Edmunds
Thatcher's boys.

Tax? MoT? Insurance? ID?
No real interest shown

Any passengers in the back?
Clearly no.  Pickets?  
Pickets? What?
Please open the boot sir... Oh.
On your way lad. Drive carefully

I was, officer, I was
More than you will ever know

Inspiration from making amazing quotations
The nation's defending its life with its shields
But the swords are all rusted the kingdom's been busted
and the ******* are bathing in gold that they steal

While the people are lying their babies are crying
their rhythm is dying 'cause heartbeats are gone
But they carry it trying to stop themselves crying
as they can't do nothing but watch on and on

As the bankers get richer the poor men get poorer
the ones in the middle are learning to steal
Where before they just borrowed now they got new sorrow
but still they don't  know that they ain't down at heel

They think they are poor so they vote in the richest
just hoping the ******* will keep them in funds
While the genuine destitute lie in the street
and the taxes are funding those *****' cummerbunds

There's a baby who's crying not just 'cause she's some brat
who ain't got no ice cream she's dying of cold
Yes it happens in streets prob'ly near where you live
it isn't just something in stories of old

There are people out there in the gorbals and barrios
the projects the banlieues the hoods and the schemes
Where their lives are the ghetto there is no way out
but to hope or to rap or to wing on a dream

They ask why you ain't reading you try but it's killing you
trying to provide for a family of two
When your mother's alone lying slumped on the sofa
and work w-w-working is all you can do

When the **** do you think I'm supposed to be doing
this **** that you say I cannot live without?
If you listened to lyrics from songs you disparage
you might start to feel an iota of doubt

They're intelligent, eloquent, more so than you
with your old boy school accent and ballot box blue
Can you rap, can you rhyme, can you keep it in time
can you tell of the **** that your family's been through?

No you sit in your office and scoff at the people
who spend their whole lives in a world that is real
They don't give a **** if you judge them or not
but they just want to shout at you
FEEL, ******, FEEL