Grimsby

In need of something special, true,

To write sagacious lines in black,

I steal a pen from Albert Gate’s

To start my plan of grim attack.

A train awaits at end-stopped street

With coke for Pontefract and Drax,

My nan comes out to clean her step

And paper over family cracks.

I write for meaning, I need to know

And fashion hopeless narratives.

The pen is weaker than the source,

Having nothing new to give.

The old house is as black as space.

Presents me with this empty page,

Memories never written, void,

The vacuum of a blind man’s rage.

Cycling through a well-dreamed scape

Proved nothing ‘cept the location.

I went. I saw. I conquered not

And slunk back to the train station.

Why write the roads they redesigned?

The rubble of the palimpsest

Are just the stories left behind,

The local boy now just a guest.