They're digging up the cobbles in our street,
moving them to a classier area.
We'll be given tarmac, black and soft in the sun.

Yes, even here it shines - on men's vests.
They're red faced, drinking from lager cans,
while their women finger scarved curlers.
At least, that's what others think they see.

But neighbours do talk with us.
There's a code of decency,
though Mum says, 'some have hearts
as black as the tarmac'.

There's a hierarchy,
in minds and heads,
if not in pockets.

Some day the toffs will turf us out,
gentrify our street. We'll be moved,
filed vertically, pigeon lofts in the sky.
Then they'll bring our cobbles back.

Like feeding birds alert for movement,
we watch the flickering images,
distracted by sounds, voices, music,
taking flight from raw deal reality.

It's the images that move our minds,
not the pain, despair, lack of care.
We crave the shock, the resus, shaking
the bordom from our souls. Life's victims
might exchange given the chance to compare.

Be ready! I'm coming for you, he warned.
We shrank into the doorways,
watching, waiting for the clutch
of his dragon's claws, his rheumy eyes, eagle's beak.
It was just Old Joe, playing our game,
until they stopped him dead.

She said he was wealthy,
owned several properties,
endowed several churches
and sired seven children,
all of whom he disowned.

For her, evidence that wealth
doesn't always trickle down.
He left it to foreign missions,
teachers of intolerance.

Tattered black and white photo,
his eyes glare from crackled glaze,
severe stare, pefected
through lifelong practice,
or simply hypocracy.

Malevolence sparked her old, blue,
hooded eyes as she told me of his death.
He claimed he did not suffer
because of his righteousness.

She bore her story as a curse,
relieved to pass it on to me.
Now I pass the burden on.

Why does the grass grow fast?
Why do pigeons persist?
Why jellyfish?

Why do weeds always succeed?
I cut the lawns, prune the trees,
seed the bald patches.

Wild ways still hold sway.
Why is nature inconsiderate?

There's a postcard on the mantle.
Where did they get to this time?
Egypt - They're cruising the Nile,
touring temples, pyramids, tombs.

They've come a long way from Blackpool.
They won't see the tower.

Will the pharoahs mind?
There treasures picked millenia ago,
deprived of their worldly needs
for a market in plunder.

Still there won't be a space for my charriot.
I don't expect to cross the Styx
or see Akenaton's face.

Postcards don't give you the smells and sounds,
the moments effect of light and dark,
the lift in spirits as you gaze on each new view,
the urge to closely observe.

Why go to this broken landscape
  to claim you've been there you've lived
  to add the graffiti of your presence to these precise hieroglyphs
  to see an unusual land that's been usual for centuries past?

It's Blackpool by the sea for me.

I'm told they marvelled
at the winter sun
rising through the henge
symbol of times gone
times to come, longer days
renewal of life's ways.

We think we understand
the coming and the going
the passage of the seasons
nights days fortunes made lost
death's cost and yet we fight.