COMMERCIAL ROAD

Loneliness in the Cascades shopping centre
too many cafes to choose from
dusk breaking over mounds of yesterday's cereals
where the weetabix minstrels meet the nail painters

Despondent minions rush to buy circus tabloids
there is no reason to believe they are not sincere
for their shopping trolley heads and reluctant accessories
shape the very core of some hypothetical vortex

Parking worries are over for the moment
though post office souls still fret in a counter-culture purgatory
pedestrian bargains are charged with unspecified irregularities
like cling film wrapped sins hanging in a limbo