City Sonnets - 89 and 90

Here are two more -- it might look like these two places are near each other, but it's not actually that Worthing, but anyway ...
the one below took about six minutes to write, which shows.

WORTHING

I only know beauty in memory.

My present reveres just the numbers, names

And flaws of every masterpiece I see

Until my language takes over and frames

dull instincts tastefully. As much it can.

That’s a big mountain. Oh, look, a Van Gogh.

And later, patching on great God’s wide span,

I’ll drain the most prosaic sediment off.

In paradise I hung on payphone lines

For times and totals, faraway spitting shows.

The sand was white, the sea was blue like wine

I guess – for beauty only beauty knows.

I do my best. But prose and figures win.

I count the lines and watch the square world spin.

PORTCHESTER

If records for such happenings were well kept

The Portsmouth food fight of 2001

Would, as all players present now accept,

Go down in written history as most fun.

It started, as so often, with a sponge

Down neck, well met with shock and vengeance vowed,

Then burst out with a bowl of cream, a lunge

Of wasteful mania carried loud and proud.

Some fled, their stomachs full, but short on nerve,

They hid behind what barriers they could find,

But soon the action spread, and they’d be served

With dishes not prepared to be declined.

The battlefield – a picture of decay

Where vivers turned to violence turned to play.