Too right he enters the stage
to a regal band of brass and pomp
cheers, whistles and applause
weaving through hands held high
welcoming the best to do it
his tracksuit outwitting our
t-shirt weather, hoodies all summer
fan references before it begins.
From there, Class Of Deja reigns.
Every word of every bar as on point
as the CD versions under our beds
retired to memory box stacks of the
songs and energies that made us
triggering nods and shake alongs
to classic verse and recent chorus
the new ones as strong or stronger
advertising hard work and growth.
Quality shines as daylight falls.
Thousands heaped in favourites
rapping along to every other line
spill out home sweet home.
Tag: east london
Vicky Park
Our wheels sliced through
the post-summer chill
swerving pups and hounds
new household plants
swinging totes of wines
and Royal Inn strolls.
Bladers tracking cones
and Pagoda smoochers
made snoozy, winding jaunts
Approach Road’s stretch
tempting a quick about-turn
of crisp trees tiring into fall.
With each keen press
outdoor heaters toasted
glass-long tales and cheer
of all-dayer tents and hugs
Sunday jogs, regretful looks
and misjudged trilby hats.
A ripped bust stared on.
Cursive loops and lines
chalked up on the wall
skim-read and hoovered up
fuelled all the cherished detail
only those ways ever stir.
Be Here Now
for the riff within riff within riffing in-jokes
to layer up sore heads of regret we’ll warm to in time
so we can exchange knowing looks about passers by
and walk into inns, debating hazy recollections.
Stand by me in the fallout of my big mouth
charged on malt, water, hops and yeast
spouting off that little bit too loudly
turning the necks of big crowds ahead.
Pass me a piece of that magic pie
whilst the lyrics we pen fade in, fade out
about the girl in the dirty shirt.
D’you know what I mean?
I know, I think, I hope
you’ll fly all around the world this week
chasing yesterday down Sidney Street
drinking until the last train doesn’t come.
Damp Shoreditch in July
Daddy bought Polly her flower pot store
The drill chipped any empty pixels off the map
Ad boys blasted change holding batons of Pret
Crowds snapped up bricks of fading paint
A lady ruined her picture puffing a stick
Dog walkers mystified workers heading back
The piercing parlour gunman rolled up his relief
Vintage record players turned tuneless necks
Window seat diners nodded out to friendly faces
Self service taps tugged on a lunch timer’s cheek
Packed cars of rowdy youngens sped by
Motionless bodies sat beneath the barber’s heat
Cowardly students stood clumsy in doorways
Faint rain rode the indecisive warn breeze
A truck’s reverse beep leaked into a phone call
Oil stained brown paper bags filled a bin
The First Weekend In May
The cockney Rastafarian down on the street
fought the Russians in Afghanistan(?) and if he
doesn’t stick to his word and run the bad guy
on Watney Market taking money from oldies
all the way back to Poplar, he’ll throw himself
under a double-decker bus himself, swear down.
The proud ground floor flat owner’s busy
weeding a few side road patches of flowers
in the bright morning air as bus engines hum
and the skinny jeans brigade march satchels
sunnies, rolling paper and sandals passed
abandoned crusty sofas and damp wardrobes.
A relentless blizzard of tuneless beeps
creates a supermarket symphony as tinnies
barbecues, sun screen, gum and crisps
slide into a plastic carrier bag that will wrap
around Monday lunch’s Tupperware box
as a fog of recollection and discourse lingers.
For now, minefields of eye contact
shuttle back and forth a pick n mix of
fiery youngins forming their routes
content middlemen so sure of their stance
and the elder people wrapped in scarves.
If not a myth, multiculturalism’s certainly mute.
The Hungover stare at looping news stories
gradually expanding as if a cloud of candy floss
but there’s nothing sweeter than a liberating
finger pressing down on the remote’s off button
to make way for finally showering and acting on
the eager, rallying texts of a tireless thinker.
Forced Conversations
In March they’re leaving Whitechapel
but not before a Jack The Ripper tour.
She thinks it’d be too scary for now
and he doesn’t really give a shit.
He seems to be a writer of sorts,
preoccupied with a first draft deadline.
As he daydreams and says nothing,
her questions and comments stack up.
The White Hart’s been given a revamp
of new woodwork and hoppy ales.
It’s just a shame they’re moving on
as they prefer it to over the road.
They trade spuds and carrots,
sticking to an orange juice and wine.
A darts game fills a wide screen
and another sleepy Sunday concludes.
The Hungover
Everyone is pretty in Shoreditch.
Who doesn’t looks the same?
Show me anyone who is ugly
to stop me from going insane.
Boardwalk Empire hair, thick frames,
and rolled up cigarettes all day.
It used to feel so different.
Now where do the freaks lay?
Must I move out to Lewisham,
Edgware, Willeseden or Brent?
Dad can’t afford me a deposit.
Perhaps I’ll need to buy a tent.
Take me somewhere, anywhere new
for just a little refreshing change
where local chat holds a new slang
pitched in a different range.
A long weekend.
‘Hi, can I help you?’
‘My friend asked me to order myself a chocolate McFlurry.’
‘Which one would you like?’
‘I have never had a McFlurry before.’
‘Well, there are many varieties, like these two pictured here.’
‘Okay, I’ll have that one.’
‘Do you like chocolate?’
“Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘That’s £2 please.’
‘Oh. I don’t think I have that much.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh. I do.’
‘Thank you. Enjoy your meal.’
‘Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt your journey. Can I sit here and ask you some questions?’
‘Yes. Okay.’
‘I’m from TFL, doing a survey about your experience today.’
The man proceeds to ask around five questions about the customer’s satisfaction.
‘So, you have rated this journey seven out of ten. Can I ask you why?’
‘Oh man. How long is this going to take?’
‘This will take around three minutes.’
The polite Polish woman sighs but with a kind humoured exhale.
‘I said seven because there were stairs to the platform and I prefer lifts.’
Nine more questions exceeding the duration of around three minutes are asked.
‘And what is your phone number so that should my management want feedback on me, they can ask?’
The woman proceeds to tell the man her phone number and postcode out aloud to a packed carriage.
As she says the last digits and hops off the train, a seated passenger makes notes on a paper bag.
Table taps.
My friend who’s detoxing came to visit so I saw in the long bank holiday weekend dry which my wallet loves me for today, unlike the 101 friends I’ve been calling since noon to get out there with me for pints that they don’t want added on top of the headaches they’ve already clocked up, trickling in reminders of biros pushing numbers onto palms that are still dirty, not like the soft hands of Hannah, travelling out by bus to salvage my bored Saturday with her company, half fuelled by pity and half by the fact that she’s less wimpish than most, bringing Welshy along with her like my time’s free for anyone to pimp off to others without my sign off, which I would have granted anyway because let’s face it, he’s great and I didn’t have anything on the cards an hour ago, dragging my vacuum cleaner around the flat to a backdrop of BBC news reports going around and around like the duster on the coffee table brushing away crisp crumbs until the next bored house tidy and back to front dusting and mopping sequence, so eager I get to have things done, like this gibberish snake of thought’s final line as Hannah’s just arrived, folding her umbrella, walking towards me and saying ‘Hello!’
High Street Hangover
A shopkeeper moved up and down the narrow aisle of pots, pans, staplers, feather dusters and doormats. A hungover guy in his late twenties stood before an array of plastic goods and scanned each shelf from left to right, looking very lost.
Frustrated that he couldn’t find what he wanted, the guy looked towards the shopkeeper for attention. He was ignored and walked passed three times until he spoke up.
‘Excuse me. Do you have any, um, dish drainer things?’ he asked. The shopkeeper looked up and down the shelves, then gestured for the guy to follow him around the corner.
‘Oh, no. Sorry, I meant for washing up.’ explained the guy who’d been pointed towards a stack of silver sieves. The shopkeeper looked around a little more and walked the guy around a few other customers to the end of another aisle.
‘Kind of… What I’m after is kept in the kitchen, but it’s got bigger holes in and is longer. It holds your clean dishes.’ said the guy, struggling to describe what he meant as he faced a bargain bucket of colanders. The shopkeeper gave a knowing grin.
Led once more by the shopkeeper, the guy walked to a different section of the shop where his guide turned to face him with a proud, task fulfilling nod towards the top shelf. His neck clicked as he raised his head to take a look up, at a row of big dish washer machine draws.
‘I’m really sorry. I don’t have a dish washer. I clean the dishes and cutlery up myself, then put them on this tray… a stand thing with holes so that the water drips off as they dry. This happens in the kitchen after I’ve cooked and eaten dinner.’ said the guy, gesticulating each point of his description, from a spoon stirring in a saucepan of food to a plate washing motion.
The shopkeeper lowered his head away from the top shelf of dish washer draws and thought to himself whilst gazing at his feet in a disappointed, rejected manner. After a few seconds he looked up quickly towards the guy with determination in his eyes that suggested he finally knew what was wanted and where in the shop it was.
The guy was now sweating out the previous night’s cocktails, flustered but focused not to waste his day off work being unproductive and ignoring a to-do list of house chores. The shopkeeper knelt down and stood up holding a large plastic basket of holes, only more suited to carrying laundry with than filing a dinner party’s sink load of cleaned props across.
The shopkeeper and guy looked at each other, both fatigued and smiling at their loss of words and resolve. The shopkeeper gave a warm, apologetic shrug of the shoulders as the guy gave a nod of thanks for his efforts. The guy stepped out into the busy, wet street and headed home to order the drainer online.
Out in Greenwich.
With the excitement of a family abroad
lucky dipping from a dozen restaurants
they one by one sat into their places
sliding fingers down laminated choices
ahead of the waitresses pen and pad.
‘Do you have a fish only menu?’ asked
the mother of three identical daughters
keen to express the latest life choice fad
profiled in the forests of magazines
piled on staff and waiting room tables.
In the corner a mute son and brother
sat shredding fat with his teeth from
a pile of barbecued chicken wings
whilst the girls shot energetic glances
towards each more seasoned diner.
Those others, formally clinking glasses
above plates of salads and breads
held softly murmured conversations
contrasting with the vacuum cleaner noise
of straws hitting a cocktail’s end.
Couple by couple by foursome
the suited and booted paid and filed out
back home to movie hire, chilled wine,
drawn curtains and faint buzzing
kitchen appliances of white and shine.
Three drinks and crispy cod fajitas later
the outgoing, intimate relatives danced
along a bus journey back East,
the lad’s head resting against a window
out to roads of the black cabbed elite.
Paper clips and croissants.
Another book on heroes,
stenches of vinegar to work,
screens, desks, tea mugs,
where bar dreams lurk
before weekend sketches,
seven pint glasses deep.
The Monday to Friday shuffle
begins atop a hill that’s steep.
Paper clips and croissants,
time sheets plotting the way.
A church choir’s faint murmers
coat streets of an hour’s play
before afternoon rituals
of acronym and jet ink.
Rock n roll babies
aged in a blink.
Status Updates
Notes of cocktail glasses
beside rooftop pools
do leave vast impressions
but not the ones you hoped.
As neighbouring as it is
your flat is in Shepherds Bush
about as Holland Park
as Romford’s the East End.
If your holiday is so great
why are you in your hotel
so logged on to work
that you’re basically home?
Any level of coolness
iPad bus journeys hold
get immediately overwritten
as you read the Metro app.
To endlessly talk diets
to anyone who will listen
isn’t really the point
to being vegetarian.
Ascot tux’s look glam
less so on tubes home
tinted by mustard stains
of a late night kebab.
The Royal London
An almighty block of procedure,
as if dropped onto the city’s grid
within a computer simulation,
hides its dusty high cealing corners
and bricks crumbling beneath fresh paint,
with warm baby blue desks
and luxury padded waiting room thrones,
that for all their designer credentials,
can’t outshine the faint visual buzz of history
bouncing between its walls,
ducking and weaving amongst trainee nurses,
junior doctors, stylish coffee hut tables,
a grand clock gone beige with age and a
lift that rattles like it’s trying to spell you its past.
Someone I’ve been seeing.
She’s a rosy lady with glasses,
usually wrapped in floral dress,
news clenched in a firm hand,
a swinging bag over an arm.
With an air of Jane Austin,
regimental routine announces her,
two seconds short of the train,
perfect platform position each time.
Every morning she boards first,
however early I begin waiting,
too tall to provide eye contact
and quickest to rare empty seats.
I used to stand shooting daggers,
now blunt with resignation,
too proud to respect her order,
not strong enough to admit defeat.
Winnie, downstairs.
My surprise and smile outshone
the eight yet to bud daffs
handed over by a near stranger
who’d taken up a forgotten offer.
She’ll put that soil to good use,
dashing colour onto the mornings
of those passing her pots along
each metal step down to work.
The wild twigs of neglected boxes
border frosted glass, saying lots
of neighbours you wouldn’t get
from a wander inside
though weed free mine might be,
the receipt’s still sat by the fridge;
four quid for a ready grown tray,
a small cost to avoid the stares.