This is the place
where the girls line the bus benches
with two before twenty and forty everyday,
Grey leggings, bellybuttons popped like diamantés,
where the boys shrug off duty
like a discount track top
and wrap it around the shoulders of
someone softer, younger, doesn’t matter who,
she was a slut anyhow, swear that it’s not mine,
where the little kids fight
over the one good doll because
she can do anything and they still have dreams,
where the older kids now know
that dreams melt faster than plastic,
that’s why there’s only one good doll.
This is the place
where your father’s only suit
only comes out to stand next to
the man who makes more in an hour
Than your whole house could in a month,
Where good people get
trapped by bad people and then worse ones,
and there’s no moral to teach here, it just happens like that
and just like that
you’re numbers in someone's paper forest
and that someone continues to cut, slash and burn.
This is the place
where the blue lights
sparkle like your mother’s
eyes when she met him and saw
‘this is my ticket out’ and then realised the sirens.
This is the place
that newspaper covers,
wraps up, patches, but no one comes to fix.
