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The city stretches further than the mind
can imagine; a fat cat capitalist’s
wet dream of high rise, high stakes, high street grime.
A youngster with no money holds clenched fists
viewing this nightmare from near and afar,
both perceptions fail to delight the eye –
the roads rammed from morning till eve with cars,
masking the sun, consuming the sky.

He reads:

‘This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare’

Yet the garment’s now strewn in a puddle
ripped right off in a drunken angry state:
Her eyes now glazed over in a drug-lull,
leaving the future really up to fate.

He reads:

‘Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.’

The ‘smokeless air’ is now replaced with a
forty-a-day habit that can’t be kicked.
She sits and sparks one up, and through the grey,
the bright flint glitters and the flame is licked.

He reads:

‘Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!’

The houses lay comatose. The heart still;
merely a light flutter, rarely rippling.
Her eyes sunk, bones bare, they’ve tried every pill –
the pressure is so intense it’s crippling.

Dear God! How did it ever come to this?
She’s in a hospital bed, lying in piss.

© Sam Cunningham, April 2009