Modern Air (selection)

Where angels
Touch the past
Open fields
And flatbeds rust
We still the night
Till future sends
And revel in
The murk
Of must

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Alight under
Diesel real sky
This is Britain’s
Midlands
Where taillights glide
For leisure
Complexed eyes
From the ravens
To the Herdsmen’s pie

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Cathedral sisters’
Uncertain ground
A retail prospect
From Madin’s mound
Pram, buggy
And credit
But for Chamberlain’s
Vistas found
Where history
Shows us all

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In concrete shelves
I breathe the dust
Of universal welfare
Student grants
Full employment
Bright young bearded things
By birthright
Making modern
Fast
Paper files, telco wires
Technology hands
50 miles from London

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Compare:
Then to now
Pamphlets, fax.
Welcome to the sky
Clad station
Who wants to be
A million squares

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Red brick terraces
Snot green garages
Mobile Oil –
Some things never change
Lost in eighties industry
Cold war legacy
US-UK nuclear
‘Hegemony’
And the jumpered man
In Asdas stores
Right and alone
Forever