Here are some girls – young ladies, at a foyer desk
Dancing a double, from swim tickets to house cafe
Two jobs in one, a posse modulating as a pool
This one, she bobs
Now here now there, a leisure swim… or cake?
Another ventures quietly to break…
Alleviation is a guilesome shift
Enormities of prices boldly ask, their passes made
Hand over fist, fleecings esteemed legitimate
Taking the heart from out of life by teas and desolation
Eight pounds an hour, perhaps, if very lucky,
And yet no more
They sweep the floor for, tidy dishes, plates
In gladsome merriment
Duties are light, no real human relation contributes
Committment, just the slightest serviceable shade
Compliant – for is not after all, all life a little hollow?
But I don’t see it
No, nor is cooking here required, stood sneaky in enclave
A lonely microwave
Solo appliance tendering hot food on range,
Grain-based and pastey, with additives prolonging stale-by dates
Flatbreads sat half between snack foods and early-lunches
Truncated taster meals
Brought in like fly-tipping as ready-made landfill
From ‘outside sources’
Warnings on clingfilm packets ‘not for vegans’ (- ‘please’?)
Stacked sandwiches bestickered carry Harrods price like banter
Struggling with their existential scantiness
I had an egg mayonnaise attempt – ostensibly
With all its copious list down one brash face of packaging
Its nutrient names laid bare
Like curvy coloured bottles decking weird apothecaries
Their inventoried concoctions, worlds unknown to mortal men
I tried, I tasted, true to form its rank
And local ambience ‘swimming pool’ hard hinted ‘stash the cash’
Run graphically, like common Blackpool rock, all through
I had been better half the price in Wilkinson
Ate on the hoof
These girls, these ladies, nothing they’d invested
With courteous engagement to their local task
Supplies like customers were theirs to call to hand whatever
No need to leave their zone
Only the motions of cafe service, a set-up measly scant
And a rentier proprietor
Making a shakedown, takings haute-coture returns
A heist, a provocation fraudulent,
Employees simulacra, weak approximations