The Dropout Café

Wedged into a gap
between a crumbling railway embankment
and ivy-clad desolation
the windowless red and black patchboard cafe
stands suspended in mid-air
over the cabbage-green waters
of the Worcester & Birmingham Canal
its squalor patently obvious
its dust-grimed floorboards in evidence
a sauce-stained greasy table
visible from the street.
Its open doorway is too threatening to enter
for the ordinary passer-by
suggests hard drugs and salmonella at least
with violence more than hinted at
though it could be perhaps a front
for some streetwise evangelical mission
if you overstretch your imagination
as the Health Inspectorate obviously did.

Geoff Stevens

If you've any comments on this poem, Geoff Stevens would be pleased to hear from you.