"A Nightmare On Alfred Street"

Alfred Street, Weston-super-mare
Here everything is fragmented
You can taste the miasma
Of dead hookers and murder victims
It all hangs like a fog
But at least you can hide in a fog.
Huge buildings and houses
Squat together like Mausoleums
Black smoke vomits from its chimneys
Like tears marked on a weary face.

Women sit in doorways with there screaming offspring.
While at the end of the street
near the old temple of the golden dawn
a hooded man sells weapons, knives and spiked clubs
To kids, issuing instructions
On how to complete the perfect mugging.

There is no wind just an eerie silence
shadows hunt me down like a rat
they have my scent
Creeping and sliding in the shadows
whispering
“Run Little Mage Run”

These shadows creep down the cracked pavements
Just a few at first
More Embedded in the clouds overhead
Entering residents through mouths, eyes and nostrils
There outside has become there inside.

This street has tracked me down
Next to the hanged tree
And the dead hospital.
I must return home at once
And think of something clever.