The empty buildings that surround the concrete, hole encrusted

patch of ground, reflect thought of just how poor

the area has become.

The first great depression of the twenty-first century

claims all in this northern town by the Mersey

and the Sunday car boot sale, a few stalls and a van with steaming

piles of bacon, has become the highlight of the week for many.

 

It is the chance to meet up and sell the remains of a home,

a fractured mess in which no-one talks of

as the two bright lights at either end

of the once proud town of Lancashire, sparkle and blaze

in the missed opportunities of a Spring fallen down day.

 

All is equal in this world, all becomes available for barter

and the feeling of neglect does not just end at the stagnant rain water

filling the pot holes on the car park and the now empty Health

and Safety office.  The tower blocks that look down,

as they always did, are but now representations of a Tetris game

in overdrive but stalled in motion as the two most thriving stalls

replenishes its squeezable tomato sauce and the box of pamphlets

on the word of God. The first nourishing the soul as it aids bacon revival,

the second to act as kindling for the fire at home.

 

Those not in the open public houses, keeping warm and declaring war

on valuable time, find their way with heart full of anti consumerism

and the need to acquire and sell many times over

and over it goes, pound for the stuffed toy not cared for now,

two pounds for the small bundled collection of picked over vinyl,

unscratched, played a couple of times but now unedible and

the musical feast unsatisfying. Rummaging

in unexpected hope and desire but feeling a fraud

as the man in the cloth chequered cap only asks for forty pence

towards two books on Restoration

poetry and plays, and you may as well have this copy of The Witch

of Edmonton as I have never been able to sell it here in this town.

I give him my last pound and wheel away

as he is fishing for change and dangling his bait

with spindled thin hands and unknowing fingers.

 

Golf clubs for sale in a place where football once reigned,

the local team nowhere to be seen in the vicinity,

no more working class heroes in black and white stripes,

supported by local working class people, no one here can afford

to play ball.

In this older town, few stars shine as hopeful as the college

students clutching their bags but perhaps with heavy heart

they look around and what they see,

witness, observe, is the truth

that they will leave their parents’ side as the town crumbles to dust

and floats off into the direction of the welcoming Mersey.

 

The Westminster Village is but a memory to these people.

The Tetris blocks, only occasionally filled,

more with those paid to assassinate the lives of many,

look down, as the Westminster charade does in unison

and the bubble gets ever smaller, the lack of air and hope

becomes a distraction to far

and the over filled tomato sauce bottle starts leaking

onto the dying floor below.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015