In the southwest end of Scarboroughtown

Behind the bar and fitness club

Where wallets empty,

Sweating in shorts, betting on sports;

You’ll find a dim-lit den of misery.

Festering residue of un-exported Industry

Hidden from passers-by.

Small wonder why,

Who wants to buy

Tired exhalations of lives fading by?

All the colours of Benetton

United by a white-picket-fence lie.

*

Sicily to Saigon to Colombo to Kabul;

A catalogue of victims of history. 

Every few years, ruddy men in green fatigues,

Beaters in a Medieval hunt

Drive the bomb-frightened game

Into their abattoirs of aspiration.

The terror of hunger makes for docile hands,

Tremulous in gratitude,

To stitch the fabric, fry the food, scrub away the feces

Cheaply, with a Smile.

One needn’t give a warm welcome

When the guest has nowhere to return to.

*

Walls stained by decades of profit black,

Sewing machines hum, staple-guns click-clack.

The only windows

 Sleep-craved imaginations,

The only song

The hacking of Jazz-Tex-encrusted lungs.

The Victims of History each earnestly conducting

A human sacrifice,

Seeking to bless their children

With certificates of exemption

From life as bipedal oxen.

*

Shudder,

Grateful I did not have to learn

How to console a heart

Too tired for dreams.