Hope the pop culture isn't too cheaply purchased.
The Goblin Vacuum Cleaner Factory
It really was a make. This foxed page
of the catalogue cracks like a popadum.
Pictures in browning Technicolor (A-lines in eggshell blue)
have women dressed like Jackie O attempting chic.
Despite the water stain one's posed
against a new upright, another a shows
a curtain nozzel's use or a new recess.
Come to think they're more like Valerie S
An incantation, utterance of 'test-card' and 'Kirby-grip'
transports us to the factory site. A navel in the curve
of pale brown fields falling to the motorway.
Where we stand beside an access road,
trees scrape across the skyıs blank plate
birds angle for ketchup coloured haws,
and a chalk path dribbles past the chained up gates,
where leaves shore against the eight foot walls.
Trance is induced by liverwort and hemp,
time-lapse of dereliction and collapse ensues:
In the flickering days the wired glass cracks ,
the smell of solder dissipates, the large fans seize,
light feints and lances between the blades.
and industrious spiders starve in the roof.
The police cease to visit as the first of us get in,
teetering over the broken bottles of the burglar defence
Fire and urine mix on oil stained cement.
This evening: a ladder and carpet off-cut prop
the glass spined wall. Arson attempts
snake behind the dirt smoked panes.
Each shadow twitches like a VU guage.
as taking mouths of spit and beer we watch
a copy of The Sun curl into sheets of ash
and the burning packing crate slowly turn
into a torpedoed freighter burning in its slick.
Facing you again I want to say - I've used
sticky backed plastic here for speed
or all you'll need are two toilet rolls
and fifteen feet of nylon rope
but the fires grows dim and it's not rats
but our feet that scrape the factory floor
as we circle, lips drawn back,our hooked and horned
silhouettes dancing like a zeotrope on smack,
for which no cheap alternative exists
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Chris Vallance
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