Dead Streets. Poem by Ripper Jones

Dead Streets.



Through the dead streets the existing shuffle,
Like ants homeward bound to their nests.
They take shortcuts through dark lanes,
Meandering onto asphalt tarry streets,
Into their little houses with little gardens.

Drunks, half drunks and quarter drunks
Continue to stagger on their merry way,
Talking of football and boxing and dock jobs,
And of the ailments of their apathetic families.

They put their keys into their doors
And stand on the sacred slab of concrete.
This slab is washed down every day,
For no conceivable purpose until it shines
Like polished lead. Scrub - scrub - scrub
With a scrubbing brush, as if the brush
Was specifically designed for this task,
Not by a godly intelligent designer,
But a symbolic designer, for this slab,
And the pavement beyond it,
Is baptised every morning when
Clean cold water to rinse is thrown
Like a wave onto the uncomplaining slab.
But the real reason for the ritual soaking
Is gossip, and gossip, gossip, gossip.
Her up there hasn't paid the rent,
And him down there has a dicky heart,
And him that has red hair has been sacked.
Blah, Blah, Gossip, gossip, gossip, gossip.

Oh, the allure of thrice deep fried fish,
And sausages, like the fish, in batter.
Some singing 'she loves you yeh yeh yeh',
Out of tune and time - and reason.
The salt and vinegar smell wafts behind them,
the drudges supper, wolfed down with gusto.

Meanwhile mainly manly men eat their
Muddy Pie and four pennyworth of lardy chips,
In greasy grease-proof paper set
On a layer of yesterday's tabloids.
They pour wrath and scorn at the bosses.
Musing over today's Andy Capp strip.

If one could die of strangeness it would be here,
In this unstudied nether-world
Of muscles and swearing and anchor tattoos,
All tomorrow to suffer their hangovers.
And the foreboding of the identical day
Tomorrow, and the next, and the next.

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