Jenny Mckimm

The Mill

These streets that haven't changed

I see it, as a visitor and remember the air,

 

I remember walking through my town.

Dominated by a 7-acre, 70 room shell towering over workers prisons joined at the hip.

The mill's cracks filled with asbestos, dust, and natures kiss.

The fantasy of the bourgeoisie inevitable, yet unattainable

This beast would haunt me, mourning Albert and forgetting the rest.

Of the lives that were most likely built to dress,

Our queen in silk.

 

Yet I cannot escape how times remain unchanged,

Instead of mill workers filling the terraced houses,

It's filled with a different working-class,

While the mill serves the rich- instead of the queen

It's the homeowners of luxury flats.

 

The youth still trying to break the rules.

Fill young lungs with toxic dust.

To explore this abandoned wonderland.

Filled with ghost stories of workers and those who (may or may not of) died in the asylum.

Or walking past and wonder what lies past the gates.

Apart from overgrown plants and rubble,

Maybe all these stories were lies,

What should it matter when whispers fill minds with false nostalgia?

 

While this shell remains used and unloved,

We: the debris worship its roots,

Decades have passed,

Not that it matters.

 

So, where the gaps of social wealth remain unnoticed,

The space instead fills with racial slurs.

Of the takeaways, corner shops and whatever else

Can remain a place for blame.

Of everything unchanged

While tinnies get crushed by cruel hands

On blurry nights out t`the pub

 

United lands men feeding off memories.

Of wars never lived-in drunken slurs

“God bless our Churchill.

 and whichever footy team suits our town”

The red, our blood, the white our skin.

long live the north: as long as you are like us

where our symbol of hate belongs you trust.

 

“Old London town is no place for men like me”

If you go remember you lose your identity

We spit on you who think y`better than us.

With your fancy lives and fancy jobs.

While we work the mines, farms and whatnot,

Our skin cracked and covered in mud.

Of humble men who live humble lives

Dreams come and go as you please.

 

“Old Maggie could never let us down.”

The iron lady with her mighty crown

That steals the food from our bitter tongues.

So now must turn elsewhere.

For how else can we make hours pass?

When all that we have is

Charity shops, 3 pubs and loneliness playing the hand

Of the cards that were dealt to us down south