Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

There was violence on the promenade

Again, yesterday.

A video on social media

Shows slender youths parting

The Saturday afternoon hoard,

Black sleeved boys amongst bare legged girls

And men, and women, and children in T-shirts,

Boys with expressions concealed

Amidst an audience aghast,

Lithe bodies curved away

From the broad blades of machetes,

Swiping in clumsy arcs,

A parry,

A counter parry,

The motion rippling through the crowd

As the boys dance, stopping traffic.

“What is this country coming to?”

Says the first to weigh in.

Andy, invisible, weight indeterminable.

“It’s gangs coming up from London”

“Gangs coming up from London”

“London gangs coming

For a day out by the sea”

“And the police, they do nothing”

“The police can’t do anything”

“There’s no prosecutions,

They get away scot-free”

“Too much immigration”

“There’s no integration”

“I’m not racist but

They don’t look like me.”

“Hey, looking for five boss babes ready for unlimited earning potential, comment below”

“The government defunded youth clubs, you reap what you sow”

“It’s always been this way, remember Brighton, sixty-four”

“Kids these days think that they’re above the law”

“My nephew says he’s too scared not to carry a knife”

“The police won’t do anything ‘til someone’s lost their life.”

“I won’t go to the promenade now, even in broad daylight”

“They’re coming up from London, specifically to fight”.

At home, Andy wonders,

Opening another reel,

If he will ever get a steady job.

And in her kitchen

A woman fantasises

As she browses

And feels she knows there is more than this,

And on the street,

A man scans for signs of hate

He has read, and felt

But rarely, explicitly, heard,

And in his bedroom

A boy stays one minute longer

Behind his door, his curtain, his mother,

And folds hopelessness under

The high of being undefeated.