I imagine someone new
has just moved here in five years time.
The District Heat Network is complete.
There are, of course,
some portions of land
ring-fenced, where people
throw old clothes, chunks of MDF and
crumpled cans of Stowford Press.
The world has breached 1.5 degrees
of warming once more
and there is still this crisis
of knowing how to relate
to each-other, to specific things
in the world. A cigarette
tumbles from a balcony
like a toy soldier,
carried by the wind.
It settles on platform 1
of Bedminster Station.
Am I still here? Perhaps.
Perhaps you are, too,
your five-year-old cagoule
no longer protecting you
from the rain, as you carry
shopping home in two sagging bags:
one hessian, one ‘for life.’
There’s a love heart of vomit –
last night’s chips – that you
skirt round, beneath
a vandalised advertising screen.
Attention continues to be a commodity.
There is some distinction
between now and then,
but also an elasticity
that conjoins, that seeps into
the “How are you?”
and the “I can’t be fucked”
and the “Where’s it to?”
and the “I’m bored, let’s go”
and the “I love you”
spoken in all the incongruous spots
as the ice sheets calve
and the headlines file in
and developers haggle
over the next vacant lots.