Friday 6 April 2018

REGIME CHANGE

I've been pondering this poem for time. It's part of a long work I have yet to write, hence my shilly-shallying about posting it. To be honest i have only a vague idea of how it ends.
It arose from a line about Fredrick Street, a real street in Widnes- if you care to look it up on Google. The line originally was about rain falling in Fredrick Street and it grew into this:

Regime Change

Just after it's always the same
the false calm of people attempting to be normal
to the soundtrack of glass being swept up,

Then the round up began.
Door to door down Fredrick Street.
Silent, sullen men,
wrists locked in plastic ties,
like so much messy cabling,
pushed onto the road,
pulled aboard lorries.


She was released on a Monday morning
cell opened and told to go.
She'd been picked up at a checkpoint.
Red flagged - the conclusion
of a sequence of random questions,
turned out she had previous.

Contained, she had waited badly,
paced the dimensions of the cage.
In that she was not alone
Mixed up in the first harvest of suspects.
Some stood a chance,
other hadn't a hope in hell.
But she was released
and to begin with she couldn't leave the cell.
I'd be interested in what you make of it. I suppose it's watch this space for updates.
Here is a track of the upcoming album from the wondrous Ryley Walker. Please support this unique artist by buying his records and going to see him live.
You can download a concert from 2015 here for free.
Until the next time.

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