Seán O'Brien

Three Poems

Edgelands 101

 
For Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts

 
So there are those who simply cannot stand
Our claim to the deracinated land,
 
Who do not like what Polyolbion’s lovers
See in poisoned weeds near manhole covers.
 
For them Works Vehicles Only, brickfields, scrub, that call
To us like life itself, mean sweet fuck-all,
 
And yet the wankers feel they must possess
And pacify the back-street wilderness.
 
Might we suspect that actually it’s class
That wants to claim the sump-oil and smashed glass
 
For makey-uppy not-quite politics
That spends its weekend mooching round the sticks
 
To find a mirror for its impotence
In crimson ponds where scruffs like us see sense?
 
Their Otherness, their ampersands and pseudo-Pollocks:
Just more overweening bourgeois bollocks.
 
What are you? One more bunch of nihilists.
Much better stop indoors and slit your wrists –
 
Or if not, stick to the M25,
And travel hopelessly, and don’t arrive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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