Returning to A City


Returning to a city where I stroll a long snake queue of London taxi cabs, I pass Temple Meads’ earthly muddy pool to blatant pushing of a tourist blag.


Blurred voices of Friday night fun now a dampened patch on concrete pillars, night-drawn shadow perched on the lip of sun dead daylight coursed through curtained copper.


On the waterfront a rustic shipwrecked song swans gliding with painted strips on their backs, along the vinegary water of the River Avon to a concrete palm of a slanting dock.


Strolling on the chalked head of fallen trees onto the freshly-mown lawn of Queen’s Square, laid out among the blades and sleeping breeze the half-eyed movement in summer’s air.


Beside the bonfire statue of a shining tip a watering step of moving marble, a floorboard-like deck to a jigsaw ship, the swaying entrance to my city’s soul.


The old character has been extinguished and replaced with a captive fantasy, shopping reapers trail the fake Metropolis where choices only feed the insanity.


Peroxide building stood tall and grotesque our history becomes a concrete graveyard, the spirit battered and the body undressed tattooed with a chain of bistro and bar.


Everything is sold or replaced with new as they shed the remnants of ancient crimes, a mirage of shopping malls vastly grew and my old city died before its time.


MJ DUGGAN 22


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