The Monster London Fatberg
Hi, Berg here. Call me Fats.
I slug-slither with the rats; creep-crawl, clog up the tunnel.
City-cloy the disposables; white, non-perishable, two-hundred and fifty metres, –
consistency unmentionable.
There’s no green, blue, or black bin big enough for me
No sack to hold this lard-fest in check. Flushed it all away,
you thought it was gone forever, – the dirty nappy, those wet wipes, last night’s condom,
the dribble-congeal of the Sunday roast. You fed our sewers
with the residue of the animals of the world; as walking processors,
where the pipe goes nobody knows but I’ve collected it all
and now I am set-in as newfound ingesting-geography
for the fleeting pink feet of rodents
with my off-white, sog-stuffed, bilious peaks.
There are days when I feel beautiful, powerful, wasticus maximus
when I grow another stretch of gunk beneath Hackney,
maybe you’ve smelt me ? through a blow-hole on your way to work
my strench running parallel to the Metropolitan line.
You don’t have ownership of your waste, it’s mine now; see me grow
bulge and suffocate the flow of excrement with tampons, toilet paper, cotton wool, hair
and finger nails; cotton buds in amongst the rats tails. Quick-creep my furry
livers ‘n breathers, mould me with your tiny feet, breathe my sweat; engage me.
The sewage treaters are coming for my heart and soul to a-boil me for fuel for London’s
big red buses. Catalytic-calmed you will no-longer smell me as I hot-foot it up The Mall,
wearing tidy chemicals.
Helen Pletts (www.helenpletts.com ) whose two collections, Bottle bank and For the chiding dove, are both published by YWO/Legend Press (supported by The Arts Council) and available on Amazon. ‘Bottle bank’ was longlisted for The Bridport Poetry Prize 2006, under Helen’s maiden name of Bannister. Working collaboratively on Word and Image with Romit Berger, illustrator, since 2012.