Working Class triptych I:
Skyscrapin’ Homesick Blues
Pigeons on the pavement
bitching ‘bout the government.
The rat with the vape says,
“This place couldn’t care less.
My heart can’t take it.
Where’s the modern Blakes?
It’s a new kind of smog:
rivers black as bogs,
sky’s a smokescreen of grey,
grey towers for sunrays
but the city’s pipes are brown,
high-rise skeletons are brown,
our houses bones are brown,
streets’ intestines are brown,
train-track-teeth are brown,
telecoms arteries brown
digesting us down,
squeezing money like its runny,
selling off our tastes of honey,
converting homes into nouns.
The thought swallows rat’s mouth.
The pigeons head-bob and coo,
say, “This is the bar for you.
Come on in, pup,
to the Feel Good Club.”
It’s the launch of a book:
The Book of Manchester. Look
at the setting – ¡que bleak!
Industrial chic –
exposed services
and a bar of redbrick.
Rat’s parched from the speech –
establishment’s each to each,
buys a pint of pale ale,
gives six pounds for the grail.
Audience self-selects –
species island, table-sects.
There’s only one rat,
sits in shadows at the back.
Three mice magi on stage and
a host – cat Mr. Manc.
They perform short stories,
harmonise as a chorus –
rat-a-tat attack fat cats
and accountants in hardhats.
Rat’s head vertigoes –
it’s gentrified bingo:
Glass box tickbox.
Skyscrapers like cocks!
No to foreign investors.
Defund the westerners!
Open arms to open borders.
Poor culture’s porous.
We adore this city’s soul.
Just stop the cancer of growth.
Boo to brand Manc Ltd.
Buy our brand-spank edition and
join our arts commune, man,
share our hard nights
on Instagram.
Now there’s time for Q&A –
keep it small, it’s a safe space.
Copycat asks for applause –
rat’s itching to his claws.
Three real ales in,
rat stands to pose a real question.
Of all the creatures, all the joints,
rat screeches for the point:
“Gentrified boxes like bars?
Howling animals in boxcars?
Calcify! with vegan bones?
Cocks like poets’... microphones?
Keep wolves’ yen-den at the door?
Mute! Amazon man’s at the door?
Young men knock down Dover’s door?
Island’s floodland; ceiling’s floor?
Export emissions, give what for?
Supply chain slavery, pockets sore?
Do you feel sick with the poor?
Global, local or yours more?
Do you mix ‘twixt class indoors,
in chatrooms or just books/offshore?
Does growth include your move ‘home’?
Homeless oasis, tents of bones?
Music’s capital strums rain’s Rome?
Marxist tourists, brollies like domes?
Keep your mind dry, think in a drawer?
Start with against, backtrack for?
Look at yourselves! What are you for!?
What is this for? Who are we for!?”
Rat reflects off every brow –
rat’s gone and done and said what now.
Rat’s mindmouth jaw-jarred wide
rat scurries screams outside.
Sky’s blue as ignorance,
clouds brew to necromance.
Towers become giant mirrors –
rat looks at ratself in ‘em.
Rat’s buried everywhere
in glass, in puddles, in wet air.
There’s no such thing as outside!
Rats in every land of lie!
Even flâneurs gentrify!
Buildings are fear petrified!
God bless pigeons, rats and mice,
cats and wolves and snakes and lice!
Complicit ecosystem’s life!
There’s no outside! There’s no outside!
[hyperventilated cries]
like that, rat’s lost into the night.
My mind full of worker bees,
the crux o’ question hits me
as I slither to the bus:
“Are we gentrifying slash branding Manchester right now?
Is literature a form of gentrification?”
Discussssss.