A rude dawn over the city
Where Pepys once fought with his beautiful wife
After seducing whatever servant-girl chanced
To be around, where kings
First ruled from cold castles full of cockroaches,
Murderous cousins
Lurking through the baleful halls of history
Eyeing the empty throne. The stinking
River long shorn of fish sweeps elegantly before
The crimson petticoats of multiple ******
Promenading along Thames Street,
Winking at under-washed gallants.

Vauxhall gardens a pithy cavalcade of priests and doxies,
Of flower girls, flaxen haired girls selling fruit,
Anxious to reach home before the ****** hour of early
Evening when beaus gather in alley ways establishing
A testosterone gauntlet in the dust-spawned gloom.

The road to Tyburn is littered with lost hopes!
On hanging day bodies swung like debutantes dancing
To jazz tunes-
Aristocrats quartered with precision squealed like common folk,
Bleeding as much. The city watched all this
And didn’t murmur-never complained-
Smiled, as only a city can smile, at gin-drunk matrons, pie eating aldermen
And the ****** activity in street shadows by relieved young women on
VE day 1945.