November
2006
Tower Blocks
Red-brick defunct factory funnel
strong against a diluted blue sky
but cowering underneath a thick grey tower block.
Not a skyscraper: an ambitious,
glamorous American invention,
(more than just an aeroplane away from here)
but games with over-sized concrete Lego bricks.
Those pictures of builders
sitting, nonchalant, high up above New York
on iron bars. An inch the wrong way
and you’d tumble like a talking egg from a nursery rhyme,
a tiny body shattered on tarmacked streets.
Above dim concrete panoramas of Glasgow,
They precipitate the fall by jumping.
Stories of splattered brains, crumpled features,
bodies shattered on tarmacked streets.
The smell of bloodstained asphalt remains,
and white washing whips in a breeze
outside a window many floors up.
I liked this alot, a rather depressing standing-point but consistent and containing the great phrase ‘Lego bricks’ which cleverly brings home the childlike studidity behind construction of these horrendous things in the first place.