Wrong Town On A Sunday

They took a wrong turn and a half

and ended up in the wrong town on a Sunday.

German tourists who didn't know better,

beguiled by a lying guide book maybe,

who should have lounged on the coast

or trekked through the good woods,

instead ended up here in this town of fear,

where the streets smell of weed and tears

and sunken eyes stare you down from upper floor windows

curtained with cobwebs and mdf.

They make the best of their glaring mistake,

for the sake of their children, crying now,

and stomp with middle European prowess,

past the one guest house that has no guests,

ignoring the atmosphere as best they can,

like the sound of a rusty tin rattling through

the unblessed deserted church,

filled with pigeon bones and rust.

And so escape the mind rape of a place

where no one outside stays.

A slate grey sky unchanged for fifty years

darkens the already dead place.

This will be the last borough gentrified

before Doomsday, they say without a smile. 

Soiled nappies wheel like surreal tumbleweeds

between the deserted buildings.