You’ve wandered into this Best Pizza and Kebab Palace
apparently by accident
and now you’re surrounded
by a cackle of lads
throwing up casual bigotry in the air
as if it where confetti
made of all the ripped-up pages
of the books they’d never read
So you sit down heavy
as the make-up of the girl sat in front of you
who appears to have caked over her sadness
with enough foundation to support a city with
but that city’s Atlantas – no more than a sinking myth
And you notice she’s perfumed as heavy as a foxglove
as if to try and ward off
the unwanted attention
of the type of men she’s spent a lifetime escaping
and failing
as they always flock back to her
like this one
but he’s no humming bird
more a one-tonne boiled ham
stuffed into a tight Primark jumper
who hovers too close over her
chirping out nasty compliments, like:
‘nice tits love’
reaking of the same aftershave
of overconfidence, fosters and threat
as his old man did
And yet
like any good Samaritan
you do nothing
just sit there
look ever-more intently at your meal
become increasingly suspicious of the species of the chicken wings you’re eating
as they where that cheap
But then you thinks it’s fitting
as everyone in here is just poultry dressed as a peacock
so say you’re free-range
when you’re battery fed
all your hand-me-down opinions
the odd paradoxes in your behaviour
the incongruity between your morals and what you do
You know you’re about as free in your actions
as the swallow nested on that dick-heads neck
who’s still continuing to p-p-peck at her discomfort
egged on by that pack of boys
as she sits there stunned
And you
my friend
continue to do nothing
as this is the place where apathy has won