Bonnie PC Hides Out Behind the Eastgate Centre Addicted to Buzzfeed Quizzes

by Jon Miller

Bonnie PC is hunkered among bins     
3% battery    gagging for signal     
dab dab dabbing the screen
porcelain white porcelain thin fingers
(cos everyone’s dead in the heather LOL)
the guts of a crispy crust
Four-Cheese and Pepperoni
greasing his shoon
placing his faith in answers
generated by bots blind as Tiresias
blinking in a Texan data farm
    
    Which Disney Princess Will Be Your Perfect Dinner Guest
    Are You a Boomer, Millennial, Gen Z Or X Based On These Dessert Choices
    A K-Pop Trainee Simulation Tells You Your Real Sexual Orientation
    Celebrity Crushes That Reveal Your Vibe RIGHT NOW!
    
Clip-clops through the deserted precinct—
Comic Con fetish weirdo in wig, frock coat, stockings,
dirty stag-night stop-out outstaring Primark’s brazen windows
to wonder which dress best hugs his hips,
nothing too skimpy for the jingscrivvenshelpmaboab Minch
maybe that hoodie with WTF across it—
Thinks: I could be any tourist from Walthamstow

—Ho! Charlie! there’s no comeback
no Countdown, Voice or X-Factor
no Nessun Dorma and standing ovations,
no stone rolling away, no last minute equaliser—

Ducks down behind the grafitti’d warehouses
car showrooms, scrap yards, chain-link fences,
down the train tracks to the harbour
to find some trawlerman who won’t rape him
and put to sea before they pin him
to that Graham Norton couch
or tour the chat shows
promoting his new perfume Chevalier
with (probably) a Kardashian in tow
to escape this pick n mix life
—Exit through the Gift Shop—
of shortbread tins, coasters,
tea-towels, tablet, pencils, key rings
fading in 3….2….1…..
to cipher, signifier, data point,  pixel.

And weeping - so close so close -
enters the 24 hour off sales
(Three Barrels on 15% discount)
the buzzer startling the assistant
reaching for the baseball bat
while Bonnie PC catches himself on CCTV,
wig askew, pizza sauce in what stubble he has:
foreshortened, greyscaled, a husk sloughed off,
gawping into the lens on a loop
that will wipe clean in an hour’s time.