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.

My neighbourhood
hungry pigeons,
small supermarket,
Turkish kebab shop.

People with faces
of a lonely ghosts,
dull cars, loud airplanes
bugging their own noise.

Fake beggars, cafe
full of strangers' talk,
grey skies above me,
ex-paradise lost.

My neighbourhood,
weekend market's stalls,
park, always empty,
closed down gospell hall.

The hub bub of the local pub,
The endless chitter chatter of pointless conversations,
The no point small talk of weather and how do yous do's,

The noise of comfort and solace,
The shield of silence,
The comfort of anonymity,

This is England,
This is the pub.

I  am  no philosopher
I  am  Paul  from  The Meadows
pulled skinny  poor from the  shadows to put  a  deal of fat  on his bones

so  how  did   I  end  up   here?
what penalty did   I  accrue?

taking the  ten  point deduction for  conduct unbecoming
I  place my  attention  deficit on re-order that I  don’t  yet  forget

smothered  in the  scrim of this  Hogarthian hood every  chip toothed  blue   scriptured face
proffers  passage to a  poisonous but tantalising hook

to write the  junk  must I  taste the junk?

peddled or paddled for  a  sweeter  flight this  avenue never  taken,
hedonic ingress  unwalked,  unwanted yet  still wondered
could such  deep surrender  be   so  sweet to  allow the  most  intimate  of plunder?

am I  Dante?
corralled   around  the  streets
of a  society that  shows no compromise amongst  the  dying embers  of fallen  enterprise

eternal  damnable gyres around a  ****** **** pyre
of concrete,  glass  and  broken  humanity

with    each    uttered    breath    a    cold      cocktail    of profanity

the  bouncing soles of the  air  I  wear  may ease  me over  the  gummed archipelagos
flag  spij-speckle  guaran islands slab secure and  fast
against  the  counselled wash an  eternal  fossilised chaw
that  resists  the  fiercest chemical blast

lost in this  sea    I  cannot  be   but shaken  by the  waxy  man  with his  head  of startled  hemp and  coterie  of cracked  carbon
as  he breaches the  domestic brink

turning a key, his shoulders  hunched  in protective  shawl against

the  spittled spate
he stares  back through me
for  sightless  miles insides out,  front  to rear, then  scuffles, rattling,  townwardly

cannot resist  the  insecticidal compulsion of the  green  and  white purgatory
where  the  neatly  stacked  wash  of fluorescence makes  oven ready  your  heaven
amid the  threnodial thrum  of
a  hundred syncopated Siemens

following  that   shuffling   cortege  of  the   bussed  in dead and  dying
I  am dutiful, altar  bound, avowed and  accursed the  host with the  ghosts in this  haunted  mall lost  and  lonely  within  England’s  mountain  green
it  is no longer the  god   bothering needles and  blunts that    draw the crowds
as  flat  screened pharmacological rapture,
that  trinity  of distilled, medicated caffeination

lead   a   once   pious   nation   through   a   precocious dream

maybe Allah yet  sees  here  his
Jerusalem  and  leads his children
upon  England’s  land  of  crescent  green

He had no insight into the mysteries
Of the gilded sports
Of the British social elite,
By the time he arrived at his beloved college,
Long, long ago in a long-forgotten England,

And in later years, when he looked back at his beloved college,
He'd insist if he possessed a single quality
That might be termed noble
He owed it to his education,
And not least the four years he spent there,

And there’d be times when certain pieces
Of quintessentially English pastoral music
Still had the power to evoke his strange and sudden flight,
While seeming to him to bespeak a passion
For the Arcadian soul of England that verged on the ecstatic,

And others when he’d dream of a day
He might return to the scene of his flight as if in atonement,
And commune with the soul of his beloved England,
With a passion verging on the ecstatic,
And then put the memory to rest for all time,

For he absconded once...just the once it was...
To avoid being chastised for something foolish he did,
And he finished up wandering, forlornly wandering,
His boots freshly caked with the purest English soil,
Long, long ago in a forgotten field in England.

Pollen scented halos
float on tin music
played from under
pop-up gazebos
(providing insurance
against dark clouds
blotting the horizon).
Light dims and glares
as the sun plays peek-a-boo
with infants running
to no end.

Pram junkyards,
picnic islands;
the territories of the
green and daisy-dotted land.
***** thumped with bass notes
in wrong directions;
dads run after toe-poked
spheres into the road.
Trees watch from the edges;
a shallow forest leading
to suburbia, where the *****,
gazebos, children are stored.

Dogs. Oh, the dogs.
This is their land, of course.
They make the rules
and pull their clothed
owners like staggering drunks
into the deep of the park.

A man jogs past.
A bike rings it's bell.
A laugh wins the
battle of decibels.
A plastic bag rustles
in the exhaling wind.
The daisies vibrate
and reach to leave their
grassy bed.
But they are part of the park.
May they never leave.
May England remain this
way in memories forever.