Poem for Essex

The day is a blanket round a heater
a matchbox burning in a fireplace grate.

The conference is compulsory,
The Travel Lodge, flat packed cardboard boxes,
The breakfast; a cold knife battle with butter
and a bagel like a skinhead’s foreskin;

the taxi still missing at 9.43.

It takes you to the edge of the city,
but only you don’t find it
instead,
road markings,
a one way motorway,
new trees,
and a sub conscious complex with a Boots and a Dixons.

Oh new city,
your lights are like armies,
aristocratic in ambivalence,
the prints on the girls legs are hyrogliphics
the car parks are kingdoms
Your underage drinkers, brawling kings and queens.

Its all so not ironic -
the lager lunges,
the evolution in Burger King,
the Linda Barker, Cash in the Attic, artez ceiling
the reality of mini emergency in family planning clinic.

The motorways develop in the dark room of council eyelids
The new builds, teenage pregnancies, robberies are blossoming,

But look at the flower garlands, all cellophane Diana,
look at the Saatchi JCB,
the runner bean canes,
the football posts with chewing gum score sheets,
something is holding them static.

I’m an interpreter of Sundays,
a plump girl with electric eel feelings
and all I know is that cities are bricks,
but you cant take the piss, out of belonging.