Welcome to Leeds Festival; don your aprons we’re cooking for the crowds.
Slap of limp discs of meat
Skin sizzles
Eager in the liquid heat
Leaping, screaming, craving release
Grease wadded beneath bandanas
Faces gleaming
Youths clammer
For my offer of damp, mealy burgers
It’s a carnival in here
All colours, hot bodies
I see the beads of sweat dancing
Round the fluorescent paint on my customers face
Elbow to elbow
Me and the other girl
Both simmering silence
But I can tell Her own world is wrapped round her
All judgmental glances, tired sighs
Like we’re above all the kids Who try to order while high
These poorly paid minutes spent
Glued to the big screen hatch in the van
Watch a real life documentary on repeat
And the field burns: all dust, ozone, insults
Hunger for a world outside our fast-food cell
Play spot the top knot
Play spot the kid who’s so off it he couldn’t find his top knot if he was holding his head
Over there
He turns slow circles in blue camp
Glazed and twitching
And they take selfies with him
Nearby a girl sloshes some unknown blue drink
Yelps as it discolours her merch
“You ok love?”
Play spot the f*** boys
“Let me buy you another.”
“No, let me get it!”
“Can I help you take it off?”
The boys swarm
Spring free from Range Rovers
Fresh from exam halls
And the kid still spirals
Play spot the fire hazard
Alcohol and bodies like scattered ash on the grass
DIY barbeques
Tents abandoned like road kill
Seared by the shriek of a boy
Lynx can ignited
Breathing washed bluish flames
Scented with the fragrance
That never got him laid
Look over there
Play spot the common hipster
Their flower crowns a halo
Forced upon their skulls
Bleached blonde and hidden behind white rimmed sunglasses
Their festival is digital, artificial
Photos or it didn’t happen, doesn’t matter
Watch the stage through pixels and snap chat
their smeared sugar lips as they sip vodka and coke and older boys
Play spot every kid we wish we could be
With their illegal glass
Swapping names and bottles
Each face a blurred Polaroid bliss,
We’re witnessing mass hysteria, we’re itching for the fix
See a girl, flung high into the spears of up stretched hands
We know what it’s like, eyelids swimming
Glance back and she’s faceless
Waist deep in the mud and running
We stay as if we are stable
As if we don’t feel the vibrations in our soles
As if we are not just worms being called to the surface by rain
Play spot the festival beat, can you feel it, can you remember it?
Last year, dropped jackets in the mud
Disjointed riddle of silent discos
Melted into the ink pool of rustling denim
Last year our skin laced with adrenaline
Wondering when we last wondered what time it was
And then the clouds break
Rain streaks the bottled tans
Cools the rouged bikini shoulders
Pop up tents stage dive
Trampled into acned pulp
Mud spotted lost wellies
Cameras flash in the chaos
We stay as if we are stable
As if we don’t feel the rain drop endorphin shots
Stampeding over the roof of this hot tin box
For a brief look skyward
The party stops
The MOUTHY Poets blog 
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