FUCK TOWN

Conrad lived on the Hope tapping his typer in Victoria Avenue

where

now

commuter flats block-paved communal yards

back onto the Misery Line

that

goes on and up to town and down and along to the old seaside

where

the pier stretches over shallow miles

and holiday boats would moor for London weekenders

that

was burnt and then was burnt again

and

Pepys lurked in the Worlds End

for navy brews

and

later i’m there for lock-ins by the open sewers

and

Pepys ran off to dig up his cheese and diary pages

and

the peasants revolted on the hinterland hills and in village pubs

where

old kings once slept incognito out on the Dick Turpin roads

and

smugglers tunnels used to lead to river wharfs

now

rotted on the receded estuary curves 

of wild birds and wilder horses

where

graffiti’d concrete pill boxes of toking boozing teens

get rumbled in late night thunderheads

by mad farmers with schizophrenic sons

and

forced to herd calves and cows

into the lee of flood barriers

high and laughing

and

shovelling

bovine

afterbirths into quicksand for the tide

to

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