Twenty Year Sentence

Around here, you're forced to play dodgems

with grannies, their walking frames and dogs.

Every person below fifty, which isn't many

attack you with the gaze of angry eyeballs.

Outside shops, yobs and tarts will pester you

to buy them fags 'n' booze ‘or else you get it'.

Inside pubs, the aged bones of narrow minds

creak as a new face steps onto the worn carpet.

Parks are full with used rubbers, smashed glass

rusted swings and chocolate bar wrappers.

Neighbourhoods of sad, lonely housewives,

twitch curtains like the window's a TV set.

A bus isn't a bus without a tramp at the back

suffocating your lungs like the local pig farms.

If a street corner hasn't got kids hanging about,

a nonce has escaped the home to re-offend.

When a bus shelters glass isn’t shattered

you've woken up in an alternative universe.

Ex girlfriends and enemies flood the streets

without fail, whenever you need to walk them.

The MP spends two grand a year on stationary

and the estate's been rotting for two decades.

The local dealer, with three cars in the drive

claims income support and never comes outside.

Every shop either sells houses or dirty kebabs.

You're either too fat to move, or moving out.

Church loonies stand at the door of Waitrose

begging you to believe but nobody ever listens.

The northern line is a fickle gateway of freedom,

closed for maintenance at your hour of need.

Other than that, he’s alright.

Standing on the football terrace

wrapped in his local team's scarf

he gets told a joke about Muslims

and with mates he starts to laugh.

He's always smoking cancer sticks

because he thinks it looks cool

and that's been his frame of mind

since his very first day of school.

A Friday night with his many mates

doesn't ever feel fully complete

without a mindless drunken fist fight

knocking a poor sod off his feet.

He tunes into Radio One religiously,

avoiding black music at all costs

because if his mates found out,

he'd have none. They'd all get lost.

For jokes he sings Justin Timberlake

mimicking the dance moves an' all.

Ask him if he's a fan of Usher

and he'll look at you like a fool.

Mike Skinner to him and his scene

is a poetic genius and lifestyle God

but the Kanye West's and Manuva's

are untalented, worthless knobs.

Oh, if you cut him he'd bleed blue

from a St George's cross tattoo.

Indented with right wing, Tory bile

like a piece of rock, right through.

He'd be the first to disagree

with any racism he came across,

oblivious that the wrong line

is one that years ago he crossed.

The son of rich property owners,

he's 27 with a plain white résumé.

Tabloid newspapers and pints of beer

drown his ignorant, empty days.

Limbo

A zoot, some cans and a bus card
then it's out with the ID
and through the metal detector.
Three quid for a coat hanger
then four for a beer
and five hours of dancing queer.

Take a minute to cool down,
have a slash and a line.
Pass the emotional girl crying
against the corridor lining.
The fresh air hits on the way out.
Dodgy hotdog vans serve it about.

Head against the bus window yawning.
Light again. Birds singing, not snoring.
Like a twin tower, onto the sheets.
Eyes sting and the ears still beat.

A day of recovery or two
then a week of routine blues.
Wage, blown before the next week.
Not the way but on that,
we don't speak.

The fuzz distorts the grasp,
of riding the motions half arsed.