"croydon" poems
The dragonflies and meadow-sweet
Follow the banks of ‘The Wandle’
Allowing what is hidden and not heard
Behind posted iron railings
To be noted, found on a map, imagined
Its very name conjures up the river’s journey
Drawing one into its currents and flows
A place of beauty where time seems slow
Rippling the edges of thought, living as a space,
Exploration, given by inclusion and exclusion
Forever to ‘wandle along’ under the sky
Between the gaps in the real
And what finds itself from what
Came before in experience and words.
Love Mary x
The River Wandle is the largest river of the south southwest sector of London, England. Its name is thought to derive from the community around its mouth, Wandsworth. About 9 miles long, it passes through the London Boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, Merton, and Wandsworth to join the River Thames on the Tideway..
Mouth: River Thamesnn
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
You're a Street Map that has to be believed.
George Street 1975 then a jewel in everybody's Crown, Mister K too.
Croydon had it all, the weekly Safeway shopping -
Grants , North End, Greyhound and L & H Cloake,
even a Manhattan skyline -
Shop girls I was too young to know
a la W.H Smith's Whitgift Centre
with a surfeit of ready Queen albums!
even the YMCA
would have done Disco
B.T Express's "do it till your satisfied"
I believe,
and the always evergreen
Van Damme Bar.
The Tavern in the Town
fondly recalled.
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 6:58 PM UTC
Snowy,foley,blowy,
Showery,flowery,bowery,
Hoppy,Croydon,droopy,
Breezy,sneezy,freeze.
And the twelve months.
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 5:53 AM UTC
Fine legged Samantha held my hand
emerging from her shell,
buttermilk from Safeway's
matching her milk skin,
then a stroll to buy a camera.
Being that intentional,
she only wanted a semi automatic,
a shutter priority to capture my widening smiles.
I was fully into manual
to capture both
her occasional wiles
and throw of tousled hair.
With slide film
we walked to Lloyds Park
Camelot of the possible,
as though Manhattan peered
from the east.
Clearly the days before
the Summer drought,
our slides captured well preserved images
lasting into time.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
Here's the story told to me about our glorious infantry.
Louts,rapscallions,friends battalions
arm in arm and full of glee
marching off to join the infantry.
In the rear lines drinking fine wines,hock,moselle,some burgundy
and some drinking ginseng flavoured tea from some far flung idea of Empire
while only half a mile along the road the whole world was on fire,
were the fat arsed generals with their horses, waiting on their second courses,
crepes and franzipans and to a man they didn't care that the war was waiting there,
'let the ******** wait',they'd say,
after all that was the gentlemanly way.
The bullets striped us left to right and falling into our own falling ***** we'd call for mum and dad
aye lads
aye lads
war is bad
but for the buggers at the rear who never so much as once came near the sound of a gun,
war was fun a chance to socialise,
society is full of lies and leaders they were not.
But death's got their number on his shell,they'll soon be joining us in hell,
so ****** them and sod the lot
were in a spot,we'll not get home,splintered bone and mangled limb and corporal thinks it's still a sin to swear
well ****** him as well,we no longer care.
As we share a final smoke,Johnny tells his favourite joke about three generals and some place called,but I forget the punch line as the time has come for one more bullet,one more gun and silence.
In Croydon,Roydon and North of Watford Gap,families are spoon fed some wholesome krap from drip fed Sergeants,battle,shield and argent,honour King and all the other little things that the senselessness of death brings home.
Let them keep their fields filled full with glory,we know the ***** **** filled story,
war is bad
war is bad
I'm glad that I cant fight no more.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 9:32 AM UTC
Croydon was never the same
after 65
when it was sawn in half.
Wellesley underpass like
a strewn underbelly,
gave the Motor vehicle its commensurate order.
Whitgift middle schools playing fields uprooted south
making way for the,
Whitgift Centre, old before its time,
like Dorian Gray in reverse.
I recall Grants department store closing in 1980.
presiding over an omen, we could not afford a niche,
only for it to become an entertainment venue.
Standardization became our
inalienable right
with the soul of the centre dying
death by a thousand cuts,
not helped by the recent riots.
But Croydon will survive.
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 5:08 PM UTC
Croydons just a new build away
if it wasn't for the once East European office blocks fad
its now inviting human capital
to dwell in jolly new builds
and with the new Westfield proposed
most indigenous inhabitants will sell up.
They knocked down the Warehouse Theatre
to prove barbarians rule.
The Central library feels lobotomised
is it part privatised ?
Nothing lasts or stands for real
in Croydon
its a place with an itch
whatever dog it represents
is your guess.
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 12:07 PM UTC
*Yes! Yes! It's a great "Barry Hodges" memories poem involving *** and degredation!*
O Croydon, dormitory town of happy memories
With your delightfully sixties-style Ashcroft Theatre
And your many enchanting concrete underpasses!
O delightful borough so deservedly renowned
As one of the major English centres of wife-swapping,
That quintessentially bourgeous weekend pastime
And surefire antidote to inevitable marital ennui!
O gracious queen of the central south London suburbs
And gay paradise of semi-detached commutersville
O I cannot sing your praises ******* loudly enough
Nor can I deny the charms of your public toilets,
Where I have oft times enjoyed a **** with a gayish stranger!
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 3:34 PM UTC
Off to buy a discounted Pentax Spotmatic 2
down Purley Radios.
I want to book a holiday in Scarborough too.
Dracula's brood back in Shirley
deserve a wait long for that postcard.
Later I plan to take Rachel to see
"The Phantom of the Paradise"
and together buy some vinyl down HR Cloakes.
"Calamity Jane", by Stray Dog I suggest
Parfait is the world for us bedsitters in Waddon.
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 3:47 PM UTC
No blinding light only the wariness
of the daily fracture
Croydon how I wish it was goodbye
you lost your voice a long time ago.
I remember how our played out rendezvous
stripped away the pretense
I have often thought of candle light as a masquerade
flickering like a contestant
and the only cure is the drifting Coombe Woods
where I can hide under those autumnal leaves,
finally letting it go.
.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
The ***** sleeps on the bench,
people walk by,
they need their necessities ;
even though they cannot afford to chose morality .
All they want is their supernova.
Empathy is just too taxing
for their fettered brains.
May 3, 2018
May 3, 2018 at 8:00 AM UTC
What has happened to our Croydon?
Where is Allders and the Warehouse Theatre?
even our Market is disappearing!
do you think you can tell,
when you stopped being our town?
Don't put us in line
with Norbury.
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 10:33 AM UTC
They killed off Croydon
when we eventually lost Safeways;
no butter milk or Blue Nun
no intelligent 70s decor
or ghosts of people with a touch of sense
walking the aisles contemplating
Kate Bush verses the Motors
for their wine bar aperitif;
or acknowleding Croydons appearance taking a hit
with the Park Hill estate.
That hasty built ****** record store
nudging your independents.
Times are a changing
not yet year zero
yesteryear still good
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 3:09 PM UTC
You weren't the poetic one, but I just read Kaddish
and thought of you;
of 1998 beach photo, Sussex somewhere - as I
remember you, perhaps a bit younger;
of sweet peroxide blonde, hiding brunette. I was
naive to the dye 'til I saw 'the Hepburn shot' - that 1950
something print, you in Rembrandt light,
or the black beehive wig in family portrait—
1970ish— dicky bows and cocktail dresses - Dad, aged
seven, in a shirt and trousers;
of youthful snapshots: Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
(4), with parents in Kent (8), your gang of girls some snowy
place (14), painting the house with Raymond in Croydon (20);
of latter digital images, 2012, more gaunt and wrinkled,
but ever-beautiful - seemingly ageless, as you wished;
of care and trust and overdone vegetables, thin gravy,
brussel sprout production lines - beautiful, mundane memories
at Cowfold breakfast bar or Langley Green kitchen tops;
of seaside trips to Shoreham, Portsmouth, Brighton, dogs
homes and holding my hand past the loud ones;
of picking roses from the garden for 'perfume' - sticky
hands, wet floors and beautiful smells;
of early morning rude awakenings, met only with cheer
and offers of tea and toast - I still have your butter tray
(hospitable even in death);
of my brother's wedding, taking time to jive and seem
alive whilst everyone else was dying inside, despite the fact
that it was you, and you only, who should care the most (and
thus, if you didn't, why should we have);
and of that very temperament, infamous tempers never
shown—at least to us—just pure, kind acceptance and
forgiveness.
You weren't the poetic one.
You were; the ninth child of a ****** and his wife
the girl with the Scottish accent
the wife of an engineer from Mitcham
the mother of three, the loser of one
the stern face of discipline
the BT telephone operator, the masseuse
the grandmother of three boys
the ageless face of beauty
the one I remember best
You told me you couldn't recall your siblings' names -
I've looked into it. Ada, Jack, Edie, Emmie, Mabel, Joyce,
Raymond, Terence.
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 11:19 AM UTC
Clap to the tune of the modern thymes.
Ones lucky to get an Americano for under £1.50p in London
It's time to count the pennies
by moving to Stoke on Trent Staffordshire
it seems to be affordable
unless all those London rehoused
are already there.
Its better than Croydon though.
oatmeal crumbs yo see
gives you a soft landing
safeguarding the streets
I feel a little safer less bother
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 7:22 PM UTC
Try to spit and polish those
old braces, despite prestigious inconsistencies.
New builds for either part shares
or your out landlishly riche are
befuddled social engineering.
What ever happened to the old way
education bringing up the
working classes.
instead of parachuting people in.
Money talks instantly;
no value seen in nurturing development
just sales and free wifi connections
cargo cults to upset Croydon
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 5:08 PM UTC
Innocent green Country bus
to Warlingham
some say its a nicer place.
But we've got an Elizabethian Almshouse
and the Whitgift Centre is sterling.
The Sun has every reason to smile
we've got Lloyds park overlooking
a Manhattan style skyline,
but have we ignored the uncosmic
North of the Borough,
even West Croydon is a jaggered corner,
making unequal development a mea culpa for the future
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 4:48 PM UTC
Croydon you're a ghost ship
boarding on the isle of ridiculousness
Erecting flats for millionaires
social housing a swept away issue.
Alas there's your North South devide
Can the Town planners rectify the polarisation,
that's sees only Tory and Labour
with no third party mooring the agenda.
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 1:24 PM UTC
Whatever you're given today
will
be taken away and tomorrow?
well
tomorrow you'll be back
begging for more
and
that's sod's law.
axioms to crack your bones
and taxes then
to take your homes,
cardboard's 'cheap as chips'
free
from local council skips.
Underneath a Croydon sky
watching the 747's fly by
why me?
Where do I fit in to this painting?
'you ain't in'
airbrushed and pushed aside
so
long and thanks for the ride
Roy rogers himself and you can make
of that what you will and
you will.
Mar 6, 2018
Mar 6, 2018 at 3:23 PM UTC