The Kemptown Verses

By JJ Leahy

Celebration of Non Urbanism

The creator himself
Indeed does not exist
It’s just mankind’s refection
In the morning mist;

How do I know?
Well he told me so
Forgetting worthless lives
And torment of woe,

I see woodland as special
Like an extraordinary friend.
Good time together
That we did spend,

So discard the compartment
Of structure so direr,
Stacking up the human
Built higher and higher.

Of these excess
Not architects negate
Played laissez faire
At any bloody rate!

Those who conform
Are bastards indeed,
Suck blood from animals
The rye and precious seed

In truth the strategy
Untried you say;
Co dwellers to spy
On each enlightened day,

Called Social and affordable
Build with people in mind
But still cluttering up the skyline
And soulless in kind.

Very peculiar fellows
They do indeed appear
As daffodils in winter
And white snow so clear.

I curse the bleak alleyways
And hear architects pontificating
Of the Postmodernist drought
And not the children’s suffocation;

Starvation of free though
Selling off their ideals
Guarantee the boundaries
In avaricious court appeals,

Why bother to denounce
Society’s progress,
The spectacle is fake
Of concrete – nothingness.

A riot be it labelled
With such bibulous gratitude;
Alternative to neighbours
Of considered attitude.

So return to the caves
Hollows and the trees,
Enjoy existing in scenery
Intake the fresh breeze,

On sky hook hangs
The reason for temptation,
I speak no more now
On my collaboration.

The Architect guilty
Of the concrete box,
Secured and buckled
With cast iron locks,

Time wasted is
Not the only pity
Twix the urban grey
And desperate Welfare city.

Examine grandiose notions
The allocation of space,
Ostentations of the preserve
Compartmentalisation of race,

Reject the values
And change to exist
So take centre stage
You constructionist!

The situation called Location
Need pragmatism to order,
Still watch the complete castration
Of our social living order.

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