Construction

Poem about the annoying construction that was going on around my apartment when I was a university student. With the increase in enrolment at school, many high rises had to be built.

I can't wait to leave this place

Town turned city

Intellectual turned capitalist

Red brick, cranes and cherry picker,

Standing in front of the off-white sky

Making me pay attention to their ugly structures

The large pieces of wood, building material

Gliding in mid-air 

Like hawks above the forest, the sea and the glen

Rising every day to the shouts of workers

Drilling, banging, 

Incessant knock, knock, knocking

People invading, invading, invading

Little brick houses built after the war

Extended to accommodate the flood of students 

With shoddy rear attachments

Cheap cardboard cash cows

And now high rises kick the plastic houses to the curb 

I crane my neck to see the top of the construction crane

It mocks me from high above,

Arranging the aggressive pieces of its people collection.

Construction corners me wherever I walk

The sidewalks broken in two and muddied

Caked with refuse

As we expand, expand, expand

Prepare for the arrival of more people,

The quota inching higher with every year

Out with the old, in with the new.

Down with quality, up with cost.

Down with green, up with beige.

Down with past, up with future.

Author's Note

Poem about the annoying construction that was going on around my apartment when I was a university student, some of it happening right beside where I was living. With the increase in enrolment at school, many high rises had to be built.

Written November 2012.