ladies and gentlemen, the Trafford Centre is now open...

Ladies & Gentlemen, the Trafford Centre is Now Open

the snaking lines
of German automation
simmer in the baking weekend sun,
resentment clogging the interiors
like a drowning gruel.

as perfect miniatures
are dragged from their seats
like torn pearls; the cracked shells
dormant until adolescence,
when the return
will devastate your mighty houses
like wildfire.

trawling from one bank of artificial lights
to the next,
each successive,
designer layer,
wrapped like a bandage,
holding your insides, in.

the ache of loneliness
escaping, taut in your
empty stares.

as you clutter your gaping houses,
with trinkets and baubles
built by tiny Chinese hands.
your gleaming appliances,
closer in warmth,
then their wearied owners.

each note laid on the counter,
like summer leaves
creased by autumn.
a piece of surrender
given over in every transaction.

and if this city of shifting sands,
were to fall like Pompeii,
your subservience choked
in petrifying ash,
future generations
cracking open each corpse,
may scratch their heads,
struggling to understand
how your insides
had turned to dust,
long before the end.