The Ghost of Schergate Steps

I

In ghastly cauldrons of the night
an Essex horde shall toast its light
of youth misspent in hostelry,
before the creep of grey gentility.

But one won’t make it quite so far.
He stumbled from his woman’s car
a block away, and checking Instagram
he slips, to spill with one last slam.

A sense of ashen time was caught
in recollections of the lad, how nought
would call him perfect but...
who in this world should bleed, half-cut?

II

He fell from Schergate Steps,
beside the key cutter’s and opposite
the pub. What a joke, his girlfriend said
at Weeley Crematorium.

Too bustling a thoroughfare
were Schergate Steps to close them as
memento for another drunken casualty.
No roses perked the stones for long.

But climb at night and you may feel
an air of Strongbow, flavoured vapes,
and toxic masculinity cry out:
‘where’s my bird? What’s this about?!’