October
2006
Under Stockport Viaduct
Meet me under the viaduct;
Force a path through choking weeds,
And find the hole we made in the rusty fence.
But don’t fall into the river;
Don’t get lost in the dark.
Meet me at the place your parents met,
Before that pyramid of glass rose over the city
Like a hypodermic needle.
The place where your father and mother would steal for a kiss,
And maybe an untutored fumble.
What makes you think of the past
Makes you fear for the future.
That now, gaudy hands,
Radioactive in the neon night-light,
Tense as they press against tattooed arches;
Finger secret buttons: T-shirts, jeans;
Close around goose-pimpled flesh,
And pull ever closer till fevered gasps collide
With pieces of crumbled brick; broken fence; surrendered,
Poisonous washing machines and, fittingly, dead romance.
I love the rags-and-streaks urban squalour romanticised so — literaly — lyrically that I can almost hear it sung by Morrisey…