How’s life in the smoke he said? I said, follow me –
We’ll greet the ex-drinker blagging a tab outside the boozer.
It’s all the aftercare he’s got. Where the old boys talk of when
Georgian was council, and the Irish pubs spilled out.
We’ll filter up the park, where those with gardens, write letters
about those without. We'll bbq another dying library.
We’ll trip the socially-cleansed churchyard, where the
scaffolders stopped spitting on the homeless when the clips
ran out. God, as ever, said nowt.
We’ll laugh at the bike-locked slippers outside the mosque, as
the fella off the telly downs a miniature before the bus. There’s
nowhere to sit these days for that amber buzz.
We’ll refresh the commemorative flowers wilting on the site of
another stabbing, on Supper street, by the café elite.
We’ll sidle the queue on benefit day, snaking the same
stretch as a baker's dozen estate agent's. It’ll take five minutes.
We’ll add up fag packet road closures, times by cycle lanes, equalling
a fine of 65.
We’ll picture the Prime Minister’s old house lying canny
in a row.
We’ll gentry-push towards the Emirates, past her cries for a quid, past
another ex-record shop, past our masters in high-viz.
For tender is the bid, they’ll tweet about who’s won.
We’ll ask the support officer about community, they'll say –
you’re in Islington now, son.
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