Charlie Cake Park

Like an identification parade

Feel like death while the children grow

A young grey face in the shade of the Armley P.O.

Pushing prams or walking sticks

Getting the money from under glass

clothes don't fit too well

Down in Charlie Cake park

You can hardly walk on your heels

stagger out blind between the bikes and cars

Frozen in the headlights glare down on Suicide Road

Walking under ladders for a living

You know we should be running round the pubs and bars

We know we'll never go short

And we'll never grow tall

In a flat above the chemists

Andy and Claire are dressing to kill

But they don't come out till after dark

In Charlie Cake park

You can't avoid the broken glass -

When you're ground and weathered like a stone

leaving footprints in the mud like the words on a grave

So unlikely so mundane

Scatter breadcrumbs in the rain

With a paper bag for a mask

In Charlie Cake park

as the chronic illness brews

We know we should feel a fraud

But the whole place never moves

And nothing will change