Two Poems

The New Management
(After Sean O'Brien, in his manner)

It's best they look tough in blue suits,
like police. They are anyway,
ordering the lights up, the heat down,
and you, mate, redundant. We're letting you go,

they say, You're not in our cost centre.
And you're not. You're out on the city's
skinny peripheries in the landscape
of windy bungalows. You don't live here

and of course it will be raining. Against you
from the start there was entropy and now
when you can't play the flute there's
only departure's uncountable sadness.

And they're watching. In other times
they marched in with banners and speeches,
read the new rules in their own rough tongue,
...