CCA image
by Nick Moss
Essential work devoted to the carting away of the non-essential.
Clearing up the surplus, the food scraps, the bottles and tins of sugar-free coke, designer tonic, artisan gin, carrot juice, the drowning in-and-drowning out of workaday despair and the next-day hangover-cure, the pizza box, plastic takeaway box, tinfoil box (the endless rush of low-paid delivery workers to the always-hungry-never sated-just one-more sushi-burger-kebab-balti maw of the Scandinavian-farmhouse-style front door)
A deep dive into the archaeology of capital’s detritus.
Trash-the packaging on the things you never knew you needed.
Tap it, unwrap it, throw it away.
And when it all piles up, spewing like last night’s cocktails
From the overstuffed uncollected black bags
That are the dross of the Westside/ Edgbaston/ Hollywood consumer credit daydream,
Rotting, putrefying, oozing down your gravel drive,
And you can’t bear to touch it, feel sick with the smell
Of the waste you churn out, as you scrap and you slough,
It hits home again that the workers you clapped in 2022
Are essential still.
And rats.
Rats everywhere.
Scrabbling around in council chambers
Like relics from a James Herbert novel,
Bringing job cuts and pay cuts, not leptospirosis,
And weaponizing their own incompetence
So that equal pay for one
Cancels a fair day’s pay for all.
Watched over by commissioners
Who demonstrate good governance
On a thousand quid a day
This is the story of Old King Cotton
He tries to hide, but he’s not forgotten
Solidarity with the Birmingham bin strikers
Reminding the second city
What “essential” really means
One black bag, one grey bin
One street, at a time.
