Poverty is lit up, ugly, in the city, in summer (creative non-fiction)

Poverty is lit up, ugly, in the city, in summer

Poverty is lit up, ugly, in this city, in summer. The sun presses it down, imprints it, illuminates it. So then you see it: hanging around on doorsteps in heaps of collapsed limbs attached to defeated bodies wearing aimless, expressionless faces; and swaying, and staggering, unsteady on its feet, intoxicated, in the park at 8:30 in the morning; the beer bottles piling up outside the door of the characterless concrete office block on the corner, the one you obediently turn up to every day, to join the floor upon floor of people, heads down, droning their days, their months, their years, their lives away…

The workers here, they kid themselves (you kid yourself), they are doing something with their lives, they have to (you have to), in order to get by, to mentally, get by. But it’s all a cover-up, it’s all a lie. For the reality is, the life is being snuffed out of them (out of you); reduced to carrying out nonsensical tasks; but what else is there to do in order to get by, practically, what else is there to do to survive?

The sun’s penetrating glare provokes the boiling over of those frustrations, resentments, prejudices and anxieties, sadnesses and madnesses, that had been simmering underneath, quietly to themselves, behind closed doors (inside of you). They now hang in the air, seething, in this city, in summer.

(That strip of black is wrapping around your skull again; something is pulled down, cutting you off from yourself, as you limp along, lethargic, heavy but empty, all itchy, anxious, and wrongwronguglywrong (Stopit!Stopthinkingthinkingthinkingdammit!Stopit!!).)

A police helicopter hovers over ‘that’ part of town. Its low repetitive rumble of doom, disquieting, clouding the blue sky sunny day. It’s not even 9am yet. As the day draws out, drags on, the heat increases, and with it, the ugliness, the impoverishment, the horribleness, intensifies. Nerves are prickled and tempers flare: a young man yells at his partner, who is rushing ahead of him along one of the main shopping streets with a pushchair, before turning his ire towards the driver of the bus he’s just stepped out in front of, forcing a sharp slamming of the brakes. And at the bus stop further along, a kid reduces his mother to tears, his impetuous temper too much for her, but even then, he doesn’t relent, but keeps shouting at her, and she ends up calling someone on her mobile for help. And the stench! Of this city, in summer. Piled up rubbish, pools of vomit. And pigeons, loads of them, loving it.

(Oh, if only the sun would stop screaming so much, put itself away, and turn the volume down on all this sweating, heaving, exhausting, horribleness; all this horribleness, and madness and ugliness; but it’s been kept down for too long, and now it wants to come out, so here it is, spilling out onto the streets, being scratched onto your skin, and is burning, burning, burning.)

School teachers are out on strike. And the town is swarming with people, young and old; shopping. ‘The people’ are not lighting fires of indignation here; the only thing that burns is boredom, frustration, people shifting for something to do (you heard there was a rally taking place somewhere, but…). ‘The people’ here haven’t gathered to raise their voices at the powers-that-be that do nothing to alleviate their poverty, but at each other: parents are yelling at their kids, and a group of teenagers are arguing with a couple of security guards round by the youth court.

And because it’s sunny, and there’s nothing else to do, this being a poor city, a poor city in England, a poor city in England in the summer, people get pissed; and sway, and stagger, unsteady on their feet, intoxicated, in the park at 1:30 in the afternoon. And beer bottles are dropped outside the door of the characterless concrete office block on the corner, the one you obediently go back to, to re-join the floor upon floor of people, heads down, droning their days… away… kidding… themselves… No mention is made of the strike, apart from the odd, “Is so-and-so not in today?” “No, she’s at home with the kids.” Revolution is something other people, in other countries do, that-thing-on-the-telly. There is no connection between the everydayness of the poverty, the boredom, the frustration, and the hostility; the void, ‘the people’ of this city are steeped in; and sexy, badass, put-it-on-a-poster, ‘revolution’.

A complete breakdown shutdown is the only thing that could do it, could end it; the horribleness, the madness, the ugliness, of it all; the poverty, lit up, ugly, in this city, in summer. But it’s too hot, there’s too little time (you’re tired). It takes all they have (all you have) to just get by, so they/you shut up and put up instead.

Hope for a revolution dies. There is too much sun in our eyes.

By Michelle Wright
Summer 2011