Bad Currency, Potted Black, Sad Sailor

Buy one get two free!

I've got bad currency - perform wallet biopsy. 

The debt doctor's a necessity. Chained to credit

for bread, butter and salt. They salted the Earth,

job's in the history vault. 

Whole town's a cancerous thing - when we walk by

you may see our bling, but the Reaper of Repossession is

out here stalking us. Shopfront windows boarded up.

Here's some medicine, snort it up. 

(Not strictly prescribed. 

Alas, it's adhered to.) 

---

A short stop in a seedy bar, on the blackest of nights -

it's a drunkard's North Star. You potted black as you broke,

uproarious laughter - your intoxicated monologue

worthy of a BAFTA:

"Boy, can a man get a little dignity

one day - this whole town's gone totally astray."

Putting out a cigarette 

in a makeshift ashtray. 

At home the numbing glow of the tele. 

Hands in your pants, snacks on your belly. 

The shoots of a better life are quietly receding,

and when the robber breaks in, he pummels you until you're bleeding. 

Civic pride is somewhere out there in a gutter,

and a homeless man spits out obscenities with a mutter,

thinks he's communicating with heaven,

but clearly he's a nutter. 

---

This place was once a home to an Armada of masts, 

the finest fleet of trawlers ever amassed. With daring men 

of grim determination, who braved restless waters for women

and children. They caught an abundance of cod, and haddock too. 

To build a legacy, for me, for you. And never did they wheep 

in the chastening ice, with mist for breath, and death on the dice. 

Their muscles ached, as they dragged in the load. What happened

to them? Did they get what they were owed? 

I wonder if they'd sob, if they were here and now. And looked at

the squalor, the undoing, the dismantling... 

For all the moments they wiped sweat from their brow,

I expect their reaction would be more expletive ridden

than my forlorn inquiry 

"How?"