Blackpool

Blackpool

The weight of it is still present. 

A dropped book from a tenement.

Sealed and unread, dared to be slit.

A music hall town of tea leaves, crystal balls

and trams. The bailiffs of domestic abuse.

He could have been a star, she said.

Why did you go there, this north? 

To be illuminated in sadness —

to scream faster to its piers?