HEAVENSLIGHT 2

Portsmouth sleeps
the old sea dog snuggles
inside the cloudy, urban blanket.
His legs, one the M275
the other the Eastern Road,
shuffle around
their shrinking shroud.
His arms, the High Street
and South Parade
scrape wearily
at the rustling sheets.

On Whale Island
a vast host of goblins, trolls
and spectres,
hoist high a long, bloodied pole.
On its point the ravaged head
of the tory MP for Portsmouth North,
Penny Mordaunt,
Very soon, before day is done,
these beastly hordes will
be boiling her bonce in a stew,
chewing happily on her
sticky brains,
washing it all down with
a nice cup of tea

A herd of stampeding mammoths,
shit heavily as they storm down
Commercial Road,
they pause briefly
outside where the HMV
used to be,
mourn its passing,
then storm through
The Cascades Centre.
Reciting Shakespeare sonnets
and screaming obscenities
they soon reduce this mournful
corridor of shopping
to a pile of dust.
The ghost of the Tricorn
chuckles ironically.

The shoulders of old Portsea Island
shudder: Albert Road and
Elm Grove try to come
to terms with the past,
they carry the burden
of a million Monday mornings,
they shiver in the rascally
afterglow of progress.

A ragged band of bohemians,
poets and popstars
has set barricades up at the roundabout
between Duisburg Way
and Pembroke Road.
They stop everyone who
comes their way  and demand they
draw a picture of their dreams,
but they provide no paper,
and their pens are filled
with invisible ink.
They have no songs
but they sing constantly.

A merry band of
magicians
wizards and witches
cavort, connive and copulate
about Eastney.
Having abandoned all
vestiges of civilisation,
they bundle estate agents and
property management providers
into their hastily refurbished temple
in the old, abandoned
Hampshire Constabulary Police Station
where they force these bungling boneheads
to change sex and colour
and live out another existence in
a new dimension,
their carnival is endless
their visions infinite

The adjunct between
hallucination and revelation
is located at
St Mary Hospital's
Rehabilitation Unit.
There, silky beings with
golden halos
play upon inconceivable
instruments.
The loving souls
in Milton cemetary
laugh and chortle,
joining in on every
celebratory chorus

The head of Portsmouth:
old Southsea Castle,
snores most heavily,
ignores the procession
of traffic wardens,
Waitrose employees, bank clerks
and charity shop assistants
approaching
from the
Pyramid Centre.
Soon they will all vanish
into smoke,

Palmeston Road turns
into a giant pond,
unworthy coffee shop
owners drown as the
impending waters
swallow up their paradises
of buns and over-priced
frapuccinos.
Swimming like soapy
sardines the alumni
of St Johns College
are swept away
and wash up on some
foreign shore,
where they are fried
in bitter butter

Negative thoughts
hover over
the Mountbatten Centre,
vicious, half-bat, half-human
creatures
burn Alexandra Park
to a cinder.
They howl and shriek,
their horrific mind games
erasing all memories
of FA cup final victories,
of D-Day daring.
They soar across the void
to Portsmouth City Museum.
An intoxicating eternity
is spent dismantling this
stately edifice
brick by brick.

The heart beats slowly,
each heavy pulse emanating
from Guildhall Square
is a thousand years in length
but passes in a flash.
Portsmouth sleeps on,
on and on,
through the thrashing nightmares
through
the celestial mayhem
bubbling above its
unconscious existence,
on and on it sleeps:
unaware,
oblivious