Her face exquisite,

Winter Jasmine blooming and flushed

Butterfly kisses

Alight and linger from my eager tongue

Mixing, softly, slowly through

Tiny droplets of midnight’s dew

Far from there is sometimes close to here

Funereal fingers trace paths through ceiling clouds

Skeletal birds,

Driven half insane by hunger

Can no longer fly

Or reach a thermal’s welcome draught

Flap listlessly, broken

Staggering, heads down in sharp contrast

To the scenes below


For across the flats demented jesters dance

Frantically and without cessation

On the heaped,

Salt-dried bones of little children

Easily discarded, forgotten in the flight

By whoever it was that begat them there

City of fires and tears and runaways,

Big red buses and dirty stations

Paving cracks refract off glass

As rain runs as rat-tails through iron grilles,

Embedded in oily roads



Office girls with ponytails and business bags,

Sensible shoes, white blouses, tight black skirts, scurry.

Morning commuters swarm, bedraggled and red-eyed,

The remnants of some long-defeated army



City of bans, grass, birdsong and bridleways,

Memories of laughter, clenched fists and stale beer

Tower blocks, fake labels, antennae and BlackBerrys

Fake smiles too, hidden behind faded stucco fronts



On TV screens, placards, flags and tents,

Smell the sweet exhaust of taxi-cabs and fluttering hopes.

This City of stone and marble columns,

Monuments, tall and thin stand, plinthed, inside small spaces.

Recording times of greater glories lost.



The stores of the rich- Harrods, Dior, Gieves and Hawkes

Red-coated soldiers rub shoulders with nazi cops,

The cardboard lean-tos; cities in themselves

Housing ragged, ill-fed men and their dogs



Asian tourists, largely obscured by baseball caps and massive cameras

Congeal blandly into the myriad assembled colours

All jostling with flower-barrows and hot dog stands

Standing, under oath from the flowing, timeless Thames

Something’s lurking, hissing slightly,

Brown, moth-like with red-flashed wings

Heading towards the few pools of light

A paper lampshade, a candle, and a slice of Moon through a wooden awning



Now, in zigzag, fluttering flight, almost dropping, then

Recovering at the last moment, drawn by the dry, bare floorboards,

In shadow now, with large peering eyes,

That seems to drink the dark,

A fat green snake punctuates the moment

You may use the extra teeth sometimes, whenever the time is right

Walking carefully below the stars

In a night, nipped by frost

Past a Bank by the river’s edge

Moonlight pouring over motor cars



Saw a man at the station

Where the chill wind blew,

Around the eerie concrete

With his son and the scars on his hands

He’d fought on our side, long ago,

When the lights went out- for all but the few

Just the spins and the bankers’ toys

Enjoying the power that money buys



No one cared, even as the sleet began

The man is bending, searching for tickets and food

In a chipped white metal bin, near a taxi bay

Neon motorways drift,

Couples with coffee text the boss, stupefied

Just like any other day