Poem written after listening to 'Coming Up' – the third album by Suede and some other songs by Suede

 

A half-empty packet

of smoky bacon

flavoured crisps

flutters from the window

of a high rise block of flats,

raining greasy crumbs

of fried potato

over Suede world,

where the pigs don't fly

And where a man called Terry,

silhouetted in soft focus

behind flimsy 
flesh-coloured curtains,

sits alone in his one-bedroom flat,

naked but for a

synthetic feather boa

purchased from the Pound Shop,

eating cold Happy Shopper

baked beans

straight from the tin.

Down in the forecourt

Jane sells the Ford Focus

where her boyfriend died

on the back seat

from auto-erotic asphyxiation

after wrapping himself

in cellophane that

he purchased from

an all-night garage

beside a motorway

in Suede World,

where everyone is frankly

a bit tired and sore

from all the rough sex

they are having,

and the street drugs

they are constantly taking,

and the looming threat of

impending nuclear war,

that weighs heavy

on their minds

like a Monday morning hangover

from the early 1980s.

Far away

in leafy North London

Brett Anderson

stands before his Argos

flat-pack wardrobe,

selects from the rail

the shirt with the most

man-made fibres,

pulls it on

but leaves it half-unbuttoned,

steps out into the feral darkness
of Hampstead.