We start in Greek Street.
Not any night,
But the end,
A grand finale;
Last orders,
At the Coach & Horses,
Before the corporate boyz move in to whitewash,
Where inky Boho Jeffrey Bernard drank,
And Gary Dunnington, the actor, and his mates are on the ****.

Meanwhile, a mom runs her hands,
Though my strands.
'Tell me everything,' she enthuses,'about your hair.'
But there’s nothing to say:
I barely wash it,
Never brush it,
And only finger combe it.
But she carries on in my locks,
Then off to dinner with her bloke.

We head off to Trisha's at 57,
A lively basement heaven:
In energy, in noise, in smoke.
I chat with Mark.
Got his heart broke:
It’s hard
To sever those traumatic bonds,
Thick as pillar posts,
When love ***** up,
Goodbye, the cocktail of toxicity,
That had you on a high,
The ***, the texts, the tenderness,
And, oh, the bliss.

Kass, a boxer musician, comes
And shakes our hands.
He’s in Armani,
And says,
His eyes dark little raisins,
'I prefers a poet over a bruiser.'
And, 'I don’t fight no more,
If I did - so I don't bother -
I’d **** ‘em.

In the corner,
Two girls with dreamy eyes:
So I read ‘em love poems.

Then Jessica Appleby's head pops round the door.
We hug and then swap tales:
'I’m all messed up,' I tell her.
'What not her, the one you wrote that poem for.'
'My man,' she confides changing the subject,
'All crazy passion and wild *** for two months -
Then nothing.
Just fizzled out like it was never meant to be.'

She exits.

'You alright Gary?'
'Yeah, you?'
'Fine.'
But I don’t buy him a beer,
A bottle of Peroni is £5.
'No, it’s £3,' he says, 'if you pay cash.'
I head for the bar.
Three times I explain to the barman, it’s £3 cash.
'Who told you that?' he says slamming the bottle down.
'Gary,' I say defensively.
'Well, tell Gary, if he doesn’t shut the **** up,
He’ll be paying a fiver, too.'

A young American artist, Kirsty, starts talking to me.
She’s trying to get ahead in art,
And says, that when she was a kid,
On a blazing Tuscany night filled with stars,
She walked out onto a stone balustrade balcony,
And knew in that moment,
She was no longer her mom and dad,
But herself, Kirsty.

The boxer musician shoves a tall fellow hard against the wall,
The altercation,
Is over before it starts.

Kass gives me a wolfish smile.
Mark buys me a drink.
Kirsty goes to the toilet.
The corner girls have left.
Mark slips his stool.

Everyone is cleared from the yard,
Just Gary and I linger
With a feisty young bar lady,
Serving the Bohos of Soho.

Drinking in their pathos,
Exhaling in the shadows,
Mingling in their juices.
My ****** up heart beats
With the Bohos of Soho.
Ahhh, the Bohos of Soho keep many an hour.
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
The Bohos of Soho,
Have many lives,
The Bohos of Soho are a good seed.
You and I,
In Soho,
For last orders.

When in despair.
Things aren't fair.
Nobody will care.
You don't have spare.
Nothing you can bear.
Don't know how to wear,
This nervous's pair.
Waiting to aware.

And finally cuts your hair.

People say you can tell a lot about a woman's style by what her nails look like.
For my mother, acrylics with baby pink sparkly french-tips.
For the blonde sitting at the nail dryer, coral.
Something about the color
looks strange with her new engagement ring.
She talks about how the second time she hung out with her fiancé
she asked him to paint her nails.
Her mother, who she insists she'll pay for, gets french tips.
They look new and fresh in contrast to her tarnished wedding ring.
The little girl with skinned knees and bug bites sitting in the chair across from me asks for blue polish on her toe nails.
Her mother tells her she should get pink.

2.
The act of women getting their nails done reminds me of warriors being armed for a fight.
long acrylics,
pointed,
rounded,
squared,
all fit for different types of battle.
Pointed for the woman who has to walk home alone at night,
rounded for the woman in the workplace who must work harder than her male co-workers,
and square for the woman at home raising her kids to know that strength and kindness
are the same thing.


3.
The women who work here speak better English than most high school students.
And their accents tell stories that I will never know.
An older woman speaks loudly and slowly,
she treats them as if they do not understand.
She will not speak to anyone but the owner; she wants him to translate what she wants to the salon workers.
What she doesn't realize is
that she is the only person here who doesn't understand.

4.
The little girl's doll is named Tessa.
She tells me that she likes my hair and shoes,
even though she has been told not to talk to strangers
twice in the last hour she has been here.
She asked her mother for change,
we all assume it's for the gumball machine in the corner.
She puts all of it in the charity jar.
I hope this girl never changes.

5. Having bare nails in a nail salon
feels the same as being naked in public.

6.
I feel terrible for laughing at the women trying to walk in those little salon flip-flops.
Some look like ducks,
others look like trained Barbies;
marching
newly polished,
ready for the world to chip away their coating
over,
and over,
and over again.