Picking up a cot in Dalmarnock

It's all grey and peeling purple
and the bulbous green overalls 
is glowering at me, flatly
unamused at it all, with his cap
and his jammed-in-pocket hands
and his upside-down-grin making 
a statement on the grimness, the grime 
and the dull grey day.

Over there, two concrete elephants stand
trunks fixed oddly high, as if they could 
sniff the winter day's sour smell, the peppered air 
that wafts this way.  Uncontaminated 
in their poured, synthetic hearts, they miss 
the asymmetrical mess rearing 
above their heads - it looks like someone's
idle thought to me, an unfortunate 
pile of reality, trussing and 
stifling, recycling lives to waste
and hope to hate - biodegradeable man
shut in a high oblong box
out of sight of a society 
that doesn't care
and an environment 
that isn't really there.

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