NaPoWriMo days 6 and 7

Day 6. A valedication or, in this case, a farewell of sorts to one of my least favourite of towns, written in draft form on the train journey home after the last time I worked there, finished in order to be posted for NaPoWriMo.

Gulag Basingrad

Trade-estate warehouses
Full of bingo and tarnished golden arches,
Festival Place squatting toad-like
Where a town used to be;
Terrible bars, identikit chainstores,
Serried ranks of insurance corps,
Offices along the tracks,
Clone-suited and commuter-crammed -
Filed under ‘dull’ in the OED,
You have theatres,
And Memorial Park,
But not enough to raise the heads
Of skeletons in sports valenki
- Basingstoke, I will not miss you.

Day 7. Each line is a declarative statement (more-or-less) until the last which asks a question.

Carriage-fellows

Bangle-lady threading beads,
Cement-booted workmen read,
Blowzy grannies off to shop and drink,
Ladies wot lunch, Chanel-pink,
Teenage texters tweet and bleep,
Paper-rustlers, Kindle converts,
Crossword-solvers, Wifi surfers,
Mums with kids and shopping bags,
Some stare blank-eyed at backs of seats,
Or maybe they are meditating,
Others watch Landscape TV,
Fields and trees and clouds and birds,
While two rows from the rear-most door,
A sometimes-poet orders words,
And wonders ‘who will read this?’