Adam Aitken
High Flyer
No street or park takes his name.
South of nowhere on reclaimed tinfoil island
a tower glares
driving sunlight into our eyes.
A million floors up the Bingo Department
counts the cost
coupons who can fly the package tour,
who will win a bet on the trots
or have the rights to eat
a shipload of crabs on the next junket.
All go home with perfect teeth.
the commercial friends who love his yacht,
and park their wheels
in a stratospheric parking lot.
Succession is trickle down
that never trickled.
It is trouble, but the cigarettes
are the brand Dad smoked and died from.
The same harbour the same wind,
all earnest and immoral.
Dogs are puppies and the menus are lyrical.
Oceans wait for his fake stylish rescue
filmed from the beach.
He’s forgotten, so rich he is
he doesn’t have a clue how happiness accrues
unless it comes with options priced in.
In Twilightville his debtor children rot
in an oriental jail
as he grows sad without the gardens
of a kind green the rest of us
will never get a space to rest within.
Land sold off recalled in rhymes.
He hopes we will remember him
but not his crimes.
His father calls out from a massive grave:
“Toughen up or blow the lot.”
Price the victory, sell failure.
Obscene wealth prices nothing.
image: Christine Lynch