Mayday

[penguin]

The 144 to Birmingham took twenty years
to burgeon from an image on the horizon
to the finish of the marathon. She promised
me I’d catch it but waiting is a hard habit
to stop, unlike this Midland Red bus
that plods at funeral carriage pace.
Of all the days in all the Mays she dies
upon the hottest – she was always inapposite:
mini-skirted in her forties, wearing high-heels
and stockings; she had the legs. By the time
I get to Droitwich, Saturday stings my eyelids,
squinting at shiny shoppers, at flowers wrapped
in plastic, the tussle for parking spaces
and the insouciance of swans. I’ve exhausted
the deposit of fond memories by Longbridge
and grimly disinter our final visit.
The Tories just defeated; double glazing’s
being fitted. Them kiddies have been messed with
and the bastards should be strung up by the ends
of their expletives; the country’s going backwards,
all these wogs and niggers, even the weather’s
being changed to suit their pigment. So colourful,
ain’t it, Handsworth, Balsall Heath and Smethwick,
overrun by weed and reggae, baltis and chapattis.
All the stuff she’d kept a lid on leapt out hissing
and splashed into my face, I was embarrassed
for my missus and our lasses, taught to view the world
through rose-tinted glasses: we left with bad excuses.
Now the axis of the white working classes
has departed: plunging from the mirror,
to the sun, to the star, to outer darkness.