I don’t dwell on the whiskey burn 
Or on lager-foamed lips
Rouge lipstick mark hints

Of a bruise to form and swell
You say you remember it well

Of me doe-eyed, above the glass
That captured a moment passed

Sleuth youths with young lungs

Huff up Villier’s smoke - so cool
Smirking, as we watch the girls
In vintage skirts, they coyly twirl
With kindling eyes and Gordon’s wine
In shy reply.

Echoes of the night before
Slowly fade in violet hours.
What’s so inviting under Arches
Now clatters back to the Strand,
Away from Embankment
And stolen midnight kisses.

So to remove a part of me

Is to remove a world of Pride.
A journey not yet run its course,
A journey not at its hearse
;
For if it is not alright
,
Then it is not yet the end.

Without due care I flick the end
Towards the river well
.
It roars and sighs,
By the ‘friar,

Past the Tower,
And Shadwell,
All through Rotherhithe.

It’s not the end, it’s not the end
.
For we go on and on
Just like the Thames.

6:56PM
Waterloo Bridge/Southbank
stone cold shells
with staircases of
helter skelter;
the thames is high
with christmastide
Lancaster Place
6:58PM

These days have ebbed
as Love's swell was checked:
the waters in some places
- all but dammed!

But now at last
I sense the rising tide
and thank Temese
for the current's turn;
now following that great writhing snake
to where its pulsing head will rake;
over the mucky soiled watery beds
of Woolwich
Greenwich
Limehouse
- and under -
Tower Bridge

     To that great gloating sight
                A crown of a billion lights
     Blazing day and night:
                And somewhere within
     In the slick oily warmth
                Our flood tides mesh,
     As over each other we wash.

Hard thrusts
wicked deep cuts
given and received
are recorded in that great mirror smoked!
where with a tug and a shove
on the banks
in the streets
through the loopy twists
everything prospers in the glow
as the decades decaying flow;
each ***** bud
red with new blood
one after t'other
flowers
before their purple petals scatter.

Let's on the luck o' the dice
(you 'n' me!)
ride out
on the flotsam and jetsom
that has carried us this far
and as pleases
merge.

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.

Love has given up.
It was the wrong religion.

And London did not melt into the Thames.
You teetered on the edge of a golden world,

and then fell suddenly—
accused of sortilege, ******, and treason.

And at his pleasure—
or was it mercy?—

Was it for the sake of your seven years,
or perhaps for the little daughter?—

in which flowed the royal blood, spoiled by *** and lineage.
Whatever it was, no matter.

He would spare you the pain
of being burnt at the stake.

Instead, to be executed like royalty—
dispatched by a French swordsman.

The prophecy must have been of little comfort
as your ladies helped prepare you to meet

Death, newly betrothed.
A gown of dark grey damask

floated over a blood-red petticoat.
Your mantle was trimmed with ermine.

Queenly, you stood and addressed those who had come to
watch you. And then you knelt and began to pray, and

quickly and mercifully, the blade
carried out its trajectory.

Abreast the Thames river strong,
On which boats form a throng
There is a city known to me.  
A city that's yet to be free.

Pulsing streets, and royal treats
Do the senses overwhelm, But I must entreat:
Who is it, in this city, at the helm?

Is it the people, bright and cordial with which the power reigns?
Or is it the river, majestically flowing, because she never wanes?
Is it he who sits in gaudy parliament seat with subsidized meat?
Or is it the crown who owns every meter and every beat of every poet and every street?
The church? Nay, there are no need for tithes, as the tides, the VAT is high.

The dark beauty rumbles through, not standing, she waves goodbye.
She bellows through London, intrinsically free.
Her Majesty seeks her union with the Sea.

Unbridled by pence and pound,
Thames continues down, down, down.
In London, though quite the town, she flows Eastward bound,
For she will not compete for her rightful crown.

Thunder aground  
when its
sound would
dock and
fill a
truck with
sea ****
but coast
was free
here that
fought her
way through
fog felt
tonight it
rained only
gerrymandered her
legs bare.

The air is slow and still
faint puttering of the last barge
shunting coal downstream

city on the edge of sleep, settles
city on the edge of night, darkens

stretched steel and stone relax
cooling to a grey relief

reeds and sedges ripple
under bridges
and on the edges of the river

city in the gaze of moonlight, sighs
city in the haze of moonlight, slips

in the steady wash of tidal waters
and the brackish water of the estuary
come the bodies from the shore.


© M.L. Emmett

Babe, where's your smile,
Don't be a melancholy child,
Can't you see
That the summer's come?
                                                                    
Stuck in your room
With your winter curtains drawn,
While the suburbs
Are all bathed in sun.
                                                                    
No more winter time lows,
Only joy now because
We can shake off the blues,
Love, there's no time to lose.
                                                                    
We can go for a cruise
Down the Thames
Or down the Ouse,
Or just snooze under summer's sun,
                                                                    
Find a village green,
Watch some cricket,
Take some tea, as you please,
Summer's made for fun.
                                                                    
Get some sweet summer air,
Feel the breeze in your hair,
Forget that sad old affair,
He's not worth all the tears.
                                                                    
Babe, where's your smile,
Don't be a melancholy child,
Can't you see
That the summer's come?