The Postcode Lottery

Forget the post code lottery

and go for some sort of

Middle England coterie

beware of the railway towns

and all they used to promise

avoid the light industrial towns

the ones that make biscuits

and plastic windows and trap your

children in call centres

the comfort of non-jobs

selling nothing to people who

are nonetheless convinced they need it

and avoid cities with cathedrals and universities

they are artifice personified they

have only one aim to debilitate you

with pretense and false hope

and sophistry deep in Middle England and

Do Not Go To Cities With Ports

they are as thieves in the night

forever looking for opportunity

eternally gazing outward beyond

the boundary of shores unwaveringly

scathing of convention and respectable behaviour

And ignore dormitory towns exurbia and similar

designed only to eat and sleep in

and cut the grass although the swinging scene

may have its diversions

and then those army towns cowering

below the shambling spectre of

beaten squaddie pubs concrete and

brick boxes with overflowing bottle banks

and what of flower filled market towns

with neat shops and bi-weekly markets

and Friday night louts and teeming

takeaways and broken windows but you can escape

to a suburban bungalow

lock the gate feed the carp

watch wildlife progammes and laugh

then running running running you find

a suitable small mountain village

where you unwittingly

unexpectedly after stroking a black and white cat

get run over by a drunken postman in a neat

little red van.