The Stokes Croft Riot

Black flags fly from the free-shop window.
Below, a girl who eats no flesh
cradles rolls of rat-cage mesh.
A burst of Caribbean lingo.

A metal sheet across the door
of what was once an anarchist bookshop.
Workmen whistle on the rooftop
of a cobwebbed Polish store.

A waft of cider pressed from plums.
Dreadlocks held in place by pencils
flow beneath a Banksy stencil
of teddy-bears with petrol-bombs.

A mother and three freckled children
munch on processed Cornish pasties.
A bunch of banjo-strumming crusties
eulogise an ancient pilgrim.

Below them sprawl the words “No Tesco!”
in a spray of turquoise chalk.
Slicing the air like a lightning-fork,
across the road, a dubstep disco.

Upstairs, on mirror-cluttered floorboards,
with their hands behind their heads,
sit four lads. Anxiety spreads.
Policemen rage and strut like warlords.

A magpie pecks at two dead wasps.
Three smokers light up from the same match.
A price-gunned artist with a name-badge
straightens rows of bags of crisps.

Honeybees crawl into window-bolt sockets.
A man with a five-stringed guitar on his back
and a sudden new symphony tingling his neck
drags copper from his fluff-seamed pockets.

A forest of police vans, some
inscribed along the sides in Welsh.
A swig of beer. A sneeze. A belch.
Vuvuzelas and a drum.

Reggae rustling from a barrow.
Metal grates on windscreens. Helmets.
Davidsons, O’Connells, Wilmots,
freegans fresh from reading tarot.

A choir of sirens. Graffitied galleries
with lithographs and oblong roses.
Dishcloths over mouths and noses.
Fish broths brewed in nearby sculleries.

Like peapods in a field, the truncheons
line behind a fence of wooden
pallets and plastic bins, a cordon
across which froth downtrodden tensions.

A lawn of glass is planted, crashing
in green and brown, down on the road.
A sparrow pipes a merry ode.
A plump househusband unpegs washing.

Lanterns flicker underneath
a golf-ball moon, as flames burn bright.
A bottle sails through orange light.
A Catholic calls upon his faith.

Confused and lost in silent thoughts,
a lesbian couple grind up ganja.
A seamstress waters a hydrangea.
“Smash the pigs!” a locksmith shouts.

A towel of smoke. A ripple of coughing.
Crackling wood. More bottles fly.
A surge of leather gives reply.
Stampeding feet, disordered scuffing.

A hooded boy squirts lighter-fluid
in and round an upturned dustbin.
A glittered girl dressed as a pumpkin
tangoes with a cloak-wrapped druid.

A Hindu teenager with braces
dreams of love and wipes her cheeks.
A broken-hearted sculptor breaks
and waves a gatepost in grim faces.

Thrashing stripe-sleeved forearms bulldoze
through a fence of passers-by,
identity numbers tucked away,
and crack a teacher on both elbows.

Two foxes yowl in carnal rapture.
New walls of trolleys, bins and tyres
leap up. A motorbike backfires.
Shields are dented. Visors fracture.

On worm-turned soil in boxy gardens
paving slabs are smashed to lumps
then hurled above the heads of tramps
at random-swiping truncheoned cordons.

A sleek patrol-car’s windscreen crunches
in a crystal spiderweb.
Doors fall like kernels from a cob.
Squirrels bound through smoky branches.

“Stop throwing concrete!” cries a beggar.
On the supermarket roof
a fellow blossoming in youth
advances with a laden stagger.

A rock swoops down into the face
of a policeman. Hearty cheers
ring out among the mutineers
whose numbers never seem to cease.

A zephyr brushes cool and light,
wafting, as though from a joss stick
with the scent of melted plastic,
through the balmy April night.

A lonely truncheon on the pavement.
Two splayed feet. A sunken helmet.
A body like a fallen elm that
gathers moss, devoid of movement.

A dozen squatters round a chimney.
Downstairs, the dubstep booms again.
A nest-haired, stripe-faced, clown-eyed man
jeers, oinking, at his fleeing enemy.

“Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets!”
chirps the flock across the croft,
some snatching riot-shields with graft
and with the skill of Olympic athletes.

A brown rat scampers down an alley,
nibbling bottoms of rubbish-bags.
A greyhound, whipping, looping, wags
his tail into a clump of holly.

Riot-shields rebound and ricochet
off an encroaching chain-store shop-front.
Like starving beagles forced to fox-hunt,
jobless graduates bounce in disarray.

The greyhound stares and barks like murder.
A green-haired woman grips the leash
and drags him past a loud pastiche
of street art blaring “New World Order”.

Birdlike signposts, bricks and bollards.
An overcharged and priced-out class.
A waterfall of corporate glass
below a club of honking mallards.

Potato waffles under armpits.
Trolleyfuls of rice cakes, veal,
tobacco, vodka, crates of ale,
veer across a crunching carpet.

A heroin-fiend’s neglected daughter
with ditches dug through both her arms
ploughs a boot through burglar alarms,
cash registers and flavoured water.

The loneliness inside her squirts
a bitter bile around her stomach
as she wheezes in a flummox
at empty, soulless human hearts.

A pigeon gobbles chunks of vomit
beside a hoarding where fake breasts
and gang tattoos that peep from vests
ensure that revenues don’t plummet.

A white-nosed only-child stares
into a different universe
where every mind is God, a force
pulsating through a trillion spheres.

A polyamorous film-maker
bites a web-designer’s neck.
Her camera holds a black-gloved smack
around the head of a hitch-hiker.

Eaves and telephone wires chirrup.
Morning growls its groggy message.
Horses canter through the wreckage.
An officer jumps off his stirrup.

Aproned girls fix chalkboard menus.
Mushrooms fizz and eggs are scrambled.
A mangy ginger tomcat tramples
violets by a music venue.

Briefcases and butterflies
meander through the paint-splashed streets.
Milk-froth bubbles. Coffee heats.
Love-dead housewives mutter lies.

Beside some scaffolding, some squatters
and a few policemen gather,
lost in mirth and friendly chatter
that doesn’t mention snouts or trotters.

A spike-haired poet without an agent
offers a line of ketamine
as though it were a vitamin
to a cackling stripe-sleeved sergeant.