Claws of conflict clasp at these night-times,
Ringing in their screeches in the wails and
Obscenities of those too inordinately fucked to care
That their slurred syllables carry pathogens of insecurity
Two streets down.
Bellowing from the chunder-piss-semen-EDM stained alleyway that rears
Its ugly drunken head
To all that would hear,
From Calata to Canterbury,
From High Street to African,
From wherever the gust of ethanol-stinking wonderment spews
Its overall-clad initiates.
Through those snaking avenues that like varicose veins
Bubble fractures across this town, flowing with a carcinogenic fervency
As they capture war-cries –
Geees, poooes,
– echoes of booze-battered buggas swaying in sparse
Pools of Friday night streetlight.
Echoes derided by swollen-eyed legions,
They themselves augmenting narrow walkways with their own fractal-frothed firewater,
Seeking respite in what was once a beautiful outpost for the deviant mind.
An outpost buried now in ticker-tape-tourniquet refurbishment,
Robbed of the throbbing, grime-greased heart that pumped
A two-hundred-beat-per-minute percussion from beneath wooden-panel-sprung dancefloor.
All of them who pour now into New Street at closing time in an awkward coalescence
Of perception-bent wanderers and nystagmus-ridden rushers,
Of placid, stoned introverts and Autumn Harvest-soaked street-stumblers.
Who congregate in loose corrals of intoxicated chaos,
Spluttering along the edge of dawn in tired tweaks and conviction-crushed comedowns,
Ironically uniform in their shared trajectory:
Seeking beds, couches, post-bongs;
Amnesia, analgesia, BP.
Paper Street Diaries 