Midge Lilt Root

The street names dance like tautograms

And uneven grey grounds make the feet likewise

Rumba, foxtrot to mashed potato

You’re footfall is distinctive here.

Abandoned shopping trolleys, line the streets by young joy riders.

The vines don’t dare to wrap around them

The vines where never there anyway

Bricks are scarred with graffiti

Children as pre-undereducated fools.

And the motors fly down the carriageways

Tom died last week, look there. Do you see the football shirt?

And his flowers smell of diesel and musk.

You feel the grudge from the men that live here.

I’m covered by the bus stop, dodged the glares.

I’m hidden by the advertisements

Which I subsequently read, whilst clinging to the posts.

And everyone’s a stool pigeon at the Mucky Duck

Hitch hiking on their pensions for a glass of Guinness

The barmaid wears cheap hooped earrings

A present from her incarcerated lover.

She has that coarse voice from premature smoking

She tells me her life.

And I leave her a tip

The motors fly down the carriageway

The bus commuters see Tom’s wreath

The faces fill with blue rain.

And they catch spilling’s in their handkerchiefs

There there, that’s enough.

Enough for the evening bus home

Through the Perspex windows