Back in Bloxwich

To celebrate my return from Africa (well, they're certainly celebrating now I'm gone), here's a poem about Bloxwich, and a sight I once saw there. With apologies to Percy Shelley, whom I've shameslessly ripped off.

I met a traveller from a common land

Who said: ‘Two vast and legless spray-tanned slags

Sleep in the gutter... Near them, on the street,

Half-drunk, two bottles of red wine, uncorked

And pouring vaguely crimson juices out

Into the bunged-up overflowing drain

To mingle with the faeces and the piss.

Under the bright half price stickers is shown

The label, read by flickering street-lamps:

"This wine was made from vines in Portugal

A mild and fruity taste, goes well with fish."

No dignity remains. Round the still shapes

Of those colossal wrecks, in rainbow hue,

A pool of vomit stretches far away.'