The Power - Paul Farley

Forget all of that end-of-the-pier
palm-reading stuff. Picture a seaside town
in your head. Start from its salt-wrack-rotten smells
and raise the lid of the world to change the light,
then go as far as you want: the ornament 
of promenade, the brilliant greys of gulls,
the weak grip of a crane in the arcades 
you've built, ballrooms to come alive at night,
then a million-starling roost, an opulent
crumbling like cake icing...
                                            Now, bring it down
in the kind of fire that flows along ceilings, 
that knows the spectral blues; that always starts
in donut fryers or boardwalk kindling 
in the dead hour before dawn, that leaves pilings 
marooned by mindless tides, that sends a plume 
of black smoke high enough to stain the halls
of clouds. Now look around your tiny room
and tell me that you haven't got the power. 

Paul Farley. Dark Film. Picador, 2012.