May 2020
Jewelled lights
Inner city
Urban sunsets lookin' pretty
A Tower block rapunzel
hair spun from ghetto gold
15th storeys high
and the stories gettin' old
No knight is waiting
A million dreams are broken
the lift is out of order
Hope seems a foolish notion
Isolation is her captor
the city her disorder
******
Throwin' caution to the sky gods
She dresses in her armour
Advances down the stair well
Into inner city drama
On the 29 she takes a seat
looks straight ahead
Smile painted on.
The day she greets
********
At dusk again, in towered gloom
Moon illuminates her room
Stitching up torn, tired seams
of abandoned.
Long lost dreams.
Her heart.
Already healing
Urban warrior forever
One day she'll leave this jungle.
Maybe. Who knows.
Whatever.
Inner city
Urban sunsets lookin' pretty
A Tower block rapunzel
hair spun from ghetto gold
15th storeys high
and the stories gettin' old
No knight is waiting
A million dreams are broken
the lift is out of order
Hope seems a foolish notion
Isolation is her captor
the city her disorder
******
Throwin' caution to the sky gods
She dresses in her armour
Advances down the stair well
Into inner city drama
On the 29 she takes a seat
looks straight ahead
Smile painted on.
The day she greets
********
At dusk again, in towered gloom
Moon illuminates her room
Stitching up torn, tired seams
of abandoned.
Long lost dreams.
Her heart.
Already healing
Urban warrior forever
One day she'll leave this jungle.
Maybe. Who knows.
Whatever.
I spent years surviving the cold isolation of London in my early twenties. Working, keeping afloat. I wrote this recently when I was working there and staying in my friends flat on the 15th floor in North London. Epic and bleak and isolating. Seems even more pertinent in lockdown!
