Our Cathedral (The Troxy and its Ilk)
 
Our faience cathedral wraps the Ratcliff junction
like fathers’ hand and we huddle beneath its beak
of blown bulb (for its doors shall open, presently).
Open to a foyer finished in wedding cake
plaster, alabaster and queasy Bakelite.
Where our shadows shall sally across Verdigris
Vitrolite; where we are reflected in cut glass
tears. Passing tramps amidst the Crush Hall palms;
a Joe Ronce, scalloped, bathed in brass
beneath a three-arm sconce. We are welcomed
by Axminster loom, meet Movietone melodies
with the wake of Players’ plumes, gluey and citrus
fumes wafting out from whomps of double doors.
Inside, swooping over sleeping trilbies
and auditorium rake are fluorescents
linear in a tangerine coving, flying
through cadmium green skies relieved in mauve.
Those trilbies find their feet for musical salutes
catching flake flaking from proscenium arches.
Until Dacron drapes lift and trilbies leave us –
filing out, fists balled like ionic volutes.
Dust motes looming as light folds in – diamantes
to be vapourised in our cathedral's white-hot womb.
The promise of a thousand escapes, about to be kept.

Joseph Long

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Joseph Long   would like to hear them