Doing Nothing, Thinking Nothing

You’re going down that hill again,
You’re going down that hill again.
The curvature of a pint glass
Resembling the Friday Saturday drool
That stains:
Blind alleys,
Distant chatter,
Plastic plants fertilised
With fag ends and bird shit.
Some haggard hound
With xylophone frame
Tied to a waste bin outside Greggs.

The stench of human piss
Gripping trails of stilettos.
Ammonia ridden doubt
Dogging each stumble.
To fall face first wouldn’t mean so much now,
As it would later.
Caged in, tarmac bound,
By small town,
Street line, building society shut down.
Today’s recessions are digital
And the food stamps QR coded.

Mind where you squat on those cobbles,
Romans sleep deep under em’.
Pure nastiness and putrescence
Brewed in streets like this,
Long before the vintage lining the new wine bar’s shelf.
It’ll be closed by next year,
The owner leaving their wife for a part time waitress.
His child soon to be parented
By the wrong crowd and a daily propranolol workout regime.

That pub’s good
Yeah we’ll go that way.
That pub’s a good one.
Mate got done in ere’,
But there’s a massive pool table.
His eyes snookered and bones bent.
We visited him twice in hospital,
But he don’t come out no more’.

There’s hair salons and charity cases,
Lights shunned and doors double bolted.
Mannequins with blonde extensions.
Others with swinging suits tailored long before
Crypto corruption and Alzheimer crash outs.
Nostalgia’s agents of voyeur
Trapped stiff behind double glazing,
Unable to get one up to save the deficit.
Somebody’s ex-girlfriend who was meant to be a gymnast.
Cuts hair for minimum wage.
She’ll open up shop next morning,
To find one of them missing.

Lads slam car doors.
Pushing down amber when asking boss man,
‘Has tonight been busy?’.
The Uber that whisks them away,
Burns Arabs for fuel.
Balkanising Middle Eastern coessentiality
Into some smoother component,
A quick trip home, a perfect exit.
Blue gloved markets
Or dead naming the latest martyr that’ll never be.
‘It’s 40 quid if one of you chunders.’.

After last orders.
Made up, posh, prissy bitch
Who bought everyone a round.
Drowns in shark fin IOUs,
Sinking far too deep to ask for a handout.
Later left behind,
To be flatlined.
By a boy racer trying to impress his mates in the backseat,
Who’ll live and die in this very town.
One a brick layer the other through the windscreen.

Her champagne flute was nearly empty.
And the fluttering melody it makes
As it rolls over the car bonnet,
Scares the driver
More than the impression the cocktail dress
Made on the convertible’s wheels.
He swerves after collision,
Car flying into a bollard.

Tilted over,
Like a bug on its back.
The engine gears up
By strumming on its bass strings.
It can keep stirring its wheels,
Trying to reverse.
But she’ll die reading the licence plate upside down.

_{Louis Schofield, 21, England.}