Swansea, bloody Swansea!

In the guts of Swansea, under the station line,

there's a white tiled subway that smells of urine.

Graffiti souls screech down from the walls,

"shit to you all" inaudibly, yet desperately calls.

When you alight from the train, as "all change" is called,

and walk down High street, you will be sadly appalled.

Ponder the oxymoron of Elysium's elegant tiles,

that are pigeon defecated and vomit defiled.

High street’s elegant staccato facades,

are ageing, ageless, in winsome brocades.

Whilst the lower floor extractions are filled against rot

in sell-all cheap shops or similar grot. 

Yes, there are post-modern, arty, Phoenix attempts,

to create pastel, architect-less, nauseating tenements.

Or the artisan artists living out bids

to bring art to the struggling fag couples with kids.

Behind High street, Castle street, and post-war curse,

the Strand is redeveloping a parallel universe.

Emperor's new clothes, for avant garde young things,

who look out over more deluded avant garde blings.

But drowning out our voices, our every thought,

in Castle gardens sits a giant TV, expensively bought.

Gardens? What a concrete, televised joke,

the grass roses of old were never bespoke.

Whirligig beetles, the scouring machines,

sucking up gum and even more obscenes.

When the fountains are vandal dyed bloody and red,

is the age of tranquility finally dead?

Pub after pub in their mercantile mire, 

dressed in Wind street old banks' elegant attire.

Mini-skirted mutton dressed up as lambs,

to the slaughter of alcohol arm in arm madams.

Late night brouhaha slumped in the gutter,

shhnott drunk shee, arms around us mutter.

As the neon rain soaks the poor old dears,

their mascara runs tragic in hysterical tears.

St Mary's church is now selling cakes and teas,

in the graveyard - "that's the vicars parking place please!"

As the evangelists at the kerbside microphone good news

in the church there are rows upon rows of empty pews.

The statue of Old Nick wooden and red 

leers down on the lingerie sexshop ready for bed.

The pong from the soap shop is lurid on air

that fights inelegantly with fag smoke everywhere.

The "art" on the black wall says "more poetry needed"

but with not one word of graffiti has anyone pleaded,

that the perfumeries piled up in the department stores,

take just one look at this turgid town of ours.

Dylan would surely turn in his grave

that his "ugly, lovely" town is simply ugly not brave.

Shopping soulless in bustle, in a pestle and mortar, 

they have been ground down like pigs away to their slaughter.

Car parks and car parks, over here, over there,

on pavements, in churchyards, there are cars everywhere.

The Kingsway has abdicated to wed a motorway 

with central reservations that say “pedestrians no way!”

Wheelie bins and wheelie bins on streets overflow,

that lead to the guildhall's painted fingernail on show.

Virginal white the clock tower condescendingly regales 

a pastiche of people, in this second city of Wales.

Funny old Fynone so grand you have been,

tucked up behind Walter road and often unseen.

Mansion houses and broadways and smart little park,

cravat and bow tie where dogs on leads bark.

What Swansea had been Fynone displays

with an aching nostalgia for the grand old days.

In Cwmdonkin park Dylan sings in his chains

and rattles in his grave as anarchy reigns.

Roll down the hillside to genteel Brynmill

now a university dormitory for students. Brill!

Walk through the senescent park, its motor boat gone, 

and the menagerie cages so forlorn, so forlorn.

Parks with cycles that are going too fast,

with no park keeper to ring the bell at last

call to vacate and sleep down the tumultuous day,

of a childhood adventure along Swansea bay.

Walled around with hills and a valley escape

Swansea prods inland in a sou'wester cape.

Raining in grand sheets drawn across Penlan

they collapse on the Tawe and its villages in van.

SA1 appears not to be fun,

built it seems for everyone / no one.

Icing coloured apartments, one upon another,

the docking for shipping gone, brother oh brother!

Marina views from more tired apartment’s ambition,

sighs at the well-oiled flotsam detrition,

that stabs their idealized real-estate brochure,

finally lancing their expensive, sartorial composure.

But in the sea at Langland there is a saving grace,

of a swimmer in the winter with the wind in his face.

Away from the bustle of a Swansea forlorn,

a poet can forgive – for a new way is born.