Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves.
(An Ode to Southwark)
After five hours tied to break-beats so thick
you could bitch-slap a rapper with, rave-drunk
on bass, funk and melody, I slouch sweat-heavily
by Waterloo bridge, ready myself to ride home.
Now, from the moment I cross over the bridge
and leave the Southbank’s lights sparkling,
the River Thames, with its long lapping
happenings, hi-fives the riverside walls for me.
The road is free, (usual for this hour) its silence
stars a shiver that shudders the road sign,
its flow winds by bin bags burst like ripe fruit,
two foxes make harvest of its juice. If you look
past their fur you’ll hear the soft purr
you might’ve once poured into your lover’s ear,
when caution thrown clear, and under shadow-
cover, were smothered in an alley with his lips.
But lovers tiff, one fox’s paw fists
and their battle cries riff with the day’s remnants
of torn bags, beer cans, cigarettes and spliffs.
Elephant & Castle is a coral reef, resplendent,
rippling with daredevil kids too schooled
in cool to check the pickpocket whose wrist-flick
shimmers like blades. A shoal of girls clothed
in tinsel dresses burp and bubble with ale,
their cheap garments ripple like fish scales
dazzling migrants sailed from a nightly slave
of mop buckets, bathrooms, broom sticks
and piss. Their tired limbs just about miss
drunk cyclists swim cross traffic, who brake
too late, front wheels smash, chains erupt,
pedals clash, perhaps now they’ll admit,
(like the rest of us) to going nowhere fast.
Camberwell is cliché hell. The bars spill out
a steady swell of weed smoke, desperate men
and willing women whose red-tipped fingers,
the same red you have cried into cold mirrors
against loneliness - that darker shade of blush,
stroke their bare arms with ‘yes, my place
is yours tonight’. This same crimson rims
the eyes of dry-lipped addicts too fixed
on last fix to catch the faint wisp of endless
hope haunting a lone street lamp, whose glow
halos the crowns of boys, heads bowed low,
shoulders sway to and fro, hands folded
to form two fingers barrelled before a cocked
thumb, this cypher’s silent guns punch the air,
salute the beat-boxer’s steady glare, his pressed
breath: fresh carpet, over which the MC spits
in time, conjures their lives in rhyme.
Rising; the last bastion of breath, Peckham
rests in south’s fortress. By the library, two
unmarked vans park for stop & searches.
For all their stealth, rubber sole boots, gloves,
high powered torches; all the hours spent bent
on code names, seeking swift results to deep
problems, leads here where metal sticks choke
black throats - for all their stealth and state-
given right, they can’t steal the fight from
Peckham’s young, whose backs still broad,
heads so rise, skin soak shine of the new blue
moon whose dominance is fractured by
the scattered light of a firework,
out of place, but welcomed.
Close by, a barman toasts his stolen gin,
a night baby gurgles in her plastic cot,
a student pauses before a full-stop,
and the culprit strikes again:
a swift-struck matchstick blooms, the fire
works, blossoming upwards, explodes outwards,
a bouquet of sparkle fire, petaling out against
a sky, so bright, it beats the sun back. Two hours
pass before it tries to climb the horizon again,
finds me hunched over by laptop screen, trying
to let my fingers know what my heart means
by this journey mashed of instances where
bin bags splash, cyclists crash, a rapper
freestyles the scene?
Well, this is how its always been, lovers, liars,
conjurers and thieves, the world is a break-beat
backed by these, over which the poets sing.
Please go to the poetry map to see the full list of entries.
