thoughts on parting up with a fiver

When I am here lying down knowing
you are safely tucked, crumpled, cowing,
creased in my unemployed's tracksuit uniform,
standard-issue.

A gateway to an oasis of cheap goods,
surrogate consumer poundland paradise,
the bereft get treats in crap merchandise.

The decline of the high street
and a devastated job market in the inner city,
foreclosures and the unskilled,
a life-long hate and love relationship.
All that hides in the filth stored, like a legend,
in the wrinkles of that green forehead,
once royal, regal, still loyal, legal.

Only you are privy to how bad I wanted it all,
how it all fell apart, year after year,
sometimes in rapture, most often in muted fear,
can of Tennent's after can of Tennent's,
the grass is always greener on the other side,
green like you, but it's always true,
even when the nights were anonymous and
hard to tell apart,
I never tried something new, even when I could,
in the end I never would,
tried and tested, worn out and overdue,
in the end it was all a bitter rue.

I drowned the voices of my body and my soul,
listen to the song you sing about all the things you stole,
the stuff we nicked, the heads we kicked,
whistling away the days until the giro comes up
in the post hole.

Certainly, as a whole, this is no high life.
It's not even a worthy valiant strife.
But you were the perennial friend,
the most common denomination,
you don't break you bend, proverbial,
your bigger cousins a rarer sort of elation,
a better kind of temptation,
which brought different complications,
a headier type of concoction,
a different gait in your motion.

But not you, you recounted well the story
of our own small private hell,
 - the kid turned into a boy,
no one asked what do you want to do today? -
distrust, abuse, addictions,
I refuse all things that I should trust,
warm food, shelter, hugs,
and choose instead a big dose of
plastic bags and mattresses with bugs,
loneliness, idolatry, cheating lovers,
missing all sense under the covers,
on an on the lesson sobers, but I ignored all omens.

The day has come where us must do part.
The bookies call, can't tell this is the end
or a new start,
if this is it or that was all,
please remember now to look the part,
don't dress up like a tart,
be yourself, discreet, reliable if not smart,
off to mates, stale beer and the good old dart.
Never were you a ticket for the cheese cart.
More likely, economy line beans on lard.