Gap
After rumours about a planning scam
for a trendy piazza by the market
the official word was concrete cancer.
Hired hydraulics pecked its sinewed blocks
to a corner of hose-dampened dust,
all six storeys of the bastard gone in weeks,
the unimaginable obliteration of a worklife routine.
Municipal monolith damming the west of the town,
it knew me intimately, took my car daily.
Knackered lift, stairwell of piss,
landings you couldn't swing a Kwik Save carrier in,
puddled levels with no reg above a K,
warnings of the week felt-tipped onto box pieces
left to litter the entrance barriers.
A fag-fumed plastic hut clocked the years,
reached into my cabin through tattooed arm
or bar-brawl glance
for grub-grained recycled tickets
thumped from a cut-price Council system;
some nights, by arrangement, let me stay late
parked close to paint- and rubber-streaked bollards.
Page(s) 34
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