Behind the birch-nudged swan-abundant lake where wool-swaddled campers
poke rice, beside the field where many a mad-eyed rabbit scampers,
ten concrete ziggurats bloom with youth in acronym-splashed jumpers,
whose still-married parents grin with pride and send plum jam-stocked
hampers.
Youth that had waxed among thatched rooves and church-run music festivals
where eighteen-year-old virgins blow balloons in merry vestibules
and pass round paper plates of local-grown chicken and vegetables,
who’d never shout “you fat gay cunt!” and punch you in the testicles.
Youth that can explain without descending into tongue-tied flounder
why Juliet asks wherefore Romeo is, youth who are fonder
of Kerouac and Plath than stuffing kebab meat in a blender.
“Wow, can these people possibly be my friends?” I stand and wonder.
Here comes Nick. Blond funky hair, lanky, face like that of a cherub,
head like a Brussel sprout. Waves of showman’s confidence envelop
his every word as he pulls me with his voice like maple syrup
into a performance-poetry group he yearns to develop.
He writes mocking, sneering couplets with precious few variations
about footballers’ wives, mobile phones, the latest pop sensations,
celebrity chefs and gossip-quacking glossy publications.
Not the kind of works one would anthologise with Andrew Motion’s.
Andrew, the Poet Laureate, broods moody-faced in his office,
thrashing out fresh verse he hopes will make him a modern-day Horace
about the national census or the Duchess of York’s new bodice
and sipping hot lemon drinks with paracetamol for solace.
Outside, the grey quadrant fills with youth who never slip or blunder
into saying imperfect things about race or creed or gender.
They police each other’s speech like ministers of propaganda.
“Wow, can these people possibly be my friends?” I stand and wonder.
Evening swoops down over the misty lake in shades of strawberry.
I stare sore-eyed through drizzle at that concrete beast, the library.
Five thousand words on Jonathan Swift by the end of February?
The rain soaks through my trainers. I dismiss all thoughts of bribery.
Here comes Nick. He’s bouncing with his plan to flaunt us in Edinburgh
so we can parade among a flyer-brandishing plethora
of extroverts in a burst of street art that strains the retina.
He guides my quickly-tired mind through our checklist of expenditure.
We park ourselves by the pool table in the student union’s
lung-pummelling bar. I feel like I could cry a bag of onions
as swarms of young pretty faces swap identical opinions
and I know there exists no place to find soul-moving companions.
Not in the bullshit-swathed school yard whose girls belong on a cow farm.
Not among the tapping, clicking desks of some blood-sapping law firm
whose girls regard a lack of wheels and designer shirts as poor form.
Not in the union bar whose girls mistake their farts for perfume.
Nick embarks on his fourth plastic cup of cider and blackcurrant
and a recital of his new poem, a venom-packed torrent
against daytime TV presenters and suchlike brands of tyrant,
slurring couplet after couplet till he blurs to incoherent.
Outside, a far tinier world than I had dared to imagine
repeats itself. Across its sterile plain, any wide-eyed virgin
who bursts with bold rebellion, possessing the slightest smidgen
of originality, is thrown beneath the system’s bludgeon.
Outside, British bombs bloom into terrorist organisations
while a billion souls are crushed by the wriggling circumlocutions
of mushy-peas-for-guacamole-mistaking politicians,
while noses are wedged in gossip-bubbling glossy publications.
Years crash past like a drunk with his leg trapped in a metal bucket.
Ring by ring, child by child, everyone I know leaps off the market.
By the reedy gosling-rich river I rummage through my pocket
and pull nothing back out except a faded, out-of-date ticket.
Here comes Nick, now festival king, now big boss poetrymonger.
He rules a spoken-word tent. He’s different from when he was younger
and orders, “Don’t use words like ‘Wigger’ on my stage!” with a thunder.
“Wow, can these people possibly be my friends?” I stand and wonder.
