a poem written to commemorate J.G. Ballard’s birthday

his dreams take slip roads
past the airports and malls
and the perimeter fencing
that goes on for miles

until he finds himself back
amongst the pebbledash
and patios of the badlands
of Shepperton

and, in this drowned world
of hosepipe ban saboteurs
and sunlounged suburbanity,
his imagination conjures

a future of high-rise privet,
ornately-carved foxes and chickens,
a clipped hedge of darkness,
a sinister dystopiary vision