Basement

A flock of Xeroxed photographs
flutter across the smallest village
in England's greenest prefecture.
Each page displays a portrait
in monochrome: a wildly gaping moron,
some funster, some spog,
every dim-wit larder child,
wide eyes misted like crystal balls.

At the tri-annual parish council meeting,
the priest passes round the snaps
to a sheathe of widening hush.
They discuss the possibilities
in the manner of a book group:
it can only be a cry for help
from a cellar full of mutes;
the aborted escape plan
from some forgotten spastic borstal.

Boats push off to scan the coast
and check each gormless buoy.
In cagouls and wellies, they trawl
the beach for boulder-headed
wackos, only finding Reebok Classics,
an empty box of Japanese detergent
and a bendy-wendy ruler. They lope across
acres of rutted earth to test
the dreaming cabbages.

In a rest home set back from the dunes,
a photocopier is broken. Phosphorescents
unzip along the seam of the lid.
An underwater treasure chest.
A pan-dimensional portal.
Seeing green light scroll
across the ceiling of her lounge,
they bang on the door five times.
The landlady has a migraine;
she winces in her shallow bath.

In the basement, they uncover vats
of murky gunk ' labelled Olive Broth '
that reminds them of the cloning fluid
they have seen in late night films.
Gnarled finger stems claw at the draws
of her freezer; she tells them, quietly,
that ginger is good for her nausea.
They find the woman has photocopied
the entirety of You Are What You Eat,
which she borrowed from the public library.

They now know that you can tell a lot
about a person from the colour of their tongue.
And there are good fats and bad fats.
But still, where are the cretinous mooks?
They widen their search to the largest
city in England's greenest prefecture.
On the pedestrianised high street
the villagers try to drum up interest
for these dunderheaded exiles.

The pamphlets they printed clot
the drains outside Debenhams.
The faces of the lost are transparent
on the surface of the corporate pond.
No-one stops to talk about the problem.
The shoppers say: "I'm already giving
as they side-step and weave,
knocking the fliers from the hands
of the weak-wristed chumps.

Letters in the Evening Post: a problem
that the Council must tackle:
the number of chuggers, tramps
and religious fanatics on the stretch
between Marks and Café Nero.
They ought to set up a drop-in centre
because some of these people
are clearly nanas: wide-eyed
full-blown village dolts. Plus,
they're making a mess of Castle Square.