Half a Morning Round Our Way

(If litter be the stuff of life,
Then this bin overfloweth...)

Just round the corner from
The French nursery,
The kids ask questions political,
As they board their
Oversized German chariot,
They can't have ponies,
But I'm on Shanks’s
Via the corner shop.
A 57-year-old natty dread
Freestyles to a young mum;
All perfume, Snapchat and trinkets,
The handsome Sri Lankan beams
My change back,
And I'm late for work again.
Phone reappropriators,
On chicken chasers,
In baggy grey,
Fly past their dead mate's shrine.
A battery-powered
Pharmacy trip, convoy past
Eric’s shock of white hair,
His four-score-eye for the ladies,
Like the two
Who never stop their
School-yard patter
Through king-sized wheezes.
A Push-biking Scotsman
Tells the breeze:
“They’re all up
Their Bohemian bars,
Worship and bow,
Worship and bow"
As we pass the
Hooligan’s pub,
Today, not hosting
Their bi-monthly
Irish funeral.

The scaffolding Poles
Out-swear the cockneys,
To the rhythm of used
Knuckles and discarded clips.
Between swigs
A girl gives a
“Fack you staring at”
To one in a hundred local cats.
The gathering outside
The prison, wait in hope
For a job-bound pick-up,
While the Police
Only seem to pick up
The over-sized German chariots
Down leafy lane,
And The Kiwi tree butchers
Get stuck into the
Not-so-leafy one.
The dog,
Doing it's bit on the grass,
Mimics the fear and guilt,
In the eyes
Of the two lads,
Spotting their first
Pub drag queen, last night,
As the cyclists fight
For the right
To take an arty approach
To the Highway Code,
The displaced seagulls
Squark on and
I follow the paint drips down the road.
I drop a quid, outside the tube, to the geezer.
Another geezer out of luck, he
Unsuccessfully tries
The door of the bookies.
I kick a silvery one in the gutter
And think,
After the bombs have dropped,
Shiny little gas canisters
And shite-y plastic doggie bags
Will be all that's left.
(That'll confuse the Martians).

The road ends.
I glance up
At the
Distanced capitalist column,
The
"Be nice when it's finished"
Shardy monument,
Stand stock still
And think:
"London,
You great,
Big
Bastard"