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Excerpt from Odour of Devon Violet
Alan Morrison
Woolies was stripped bare by less dramatic administrators,
Then promptly occupied by flash-in-the-pan pick-and-
Mix stores, Poundstretcher purgatories, homogenous
Souvenir shops sporting cheap patriotic Jack-draped
Paraphernalia; and other pop-up opportunists… So long!
To cut-price purchases with a hint of craft and panache
Pitched just below Retail Price Indexes, but without
Compromising quality of craftsmanship, care of manufacture,
Or epicurean delicacies – No more LadyBird kids’ clothes:
Chad Valley toys now thrown away to “Chav” alleys,
Pile-ups of prams, baseball and benefit caps of a designer
Jungian underclass of “scroungers”, shadow-projected
Scapegoats, feral urban pests, along with ubiquitous labels –
ASBO, NEET, WRAG and other acronymous nomenclature –
Outcasts, sofa-surfers, outlawed squatters, curb-hawkers who
Tout bowdlerised Big Issues to blueing Mr. Bird’s new
‘Pull-them-up-by-their-bootstraps’ Cosmopolitan motto
Of macro-subscription: “A hand up, not a hand out”… O
Button up your overcoat
When the wind is free
Take good care of yourself
You belong to me
When the wind is free
Take good care of yourself
You belong to me
Fasten up your hungry mouth
When food banks are empty
Save your vouchers for
BIG SOCIETY…
Alan Morrison is the author of five poetry collections and is editor of The Recusant (www.therecusant.org.uk) and of the anti-austerity anthologies Emergency Verse and The Robin Hood Book (both Caparison, 2010/12). This poem is taken from his latest project Odour of Devon Violet.
