I
Behold a city! Grimed, forlorn and bleak,
Whose streets like pinball gutters flare and spit.
Where tenementary skulk and weave and sneak
Like hobs in some apocalyptic pit
While temporary tenants, through the week,
Arrive and leave by train for want of it.
This city casts a glamour with its name
And moths turn their attention to the flame.
II
Ah, London! Dr Johnson, you spoke right,
Proclaiming it had all life could afford.
It’s years since your ill-fitting wig (a fright!)
Was brushed by Mrs Thrale (whom you adored).
And Hodge your cat, who moused then by gaslight,
Is dust as you are, unbeknighted lord.
Is he who tires of London tired of life?
Not if he came to London for a wife.
III
For wives there surely are ‘neath London’s rains,
And husbands too – sometimes in the same bed!
But wives in actualitas are pains;
We’ll view those in potentia instead.
Those maidens tripping down the sooty lanes
To drink from pitchers deep of cocktails red
Or green or blue. The things these girls imbibe!
They are a very godsend for the scribe.
IV
See! Here they come! Post-feminist each one,
Empowered by the magazines who learn
In time that girls just do wanna have fun
And tell them they can have it. Now they turn
From public sector desks towards the sun,
(Or posts at private equity concerns).
They hit the bars in wave on wave of shoes,
Tsumanis stilled by oceans wide of booze.
V
But every Juliet needs Romeo,
Each Eloise still an Abelard must pluck,
As Laura needed Petrarch, even so,
Her nectar for Renaissance man to suck.
So too, these girls need boys - and there they go!
They preen their plumes and pray to Lady Luck
They’ll make successful hunters. After all,
There’s still some trophy space upon the wall.
VI
It’s Friday night. The city is replete.
From Uxbridge down to Brixton they’ll be drunk.
They’re pissed in Palmer’s Green and Baker Street,
In Elephant they’re all elephant’s trunk.
From Cockfosters to Croydon drunken feet
Will skip as someone passes round the skunk.
What joy to see a rising generation
Choose problem drinking as an occupation.
VII
Now chain-pub jack-tars up and take their leave.
This coast was never good, the tide a fight.
The Ship of Fools now strikes le bateau ivre
And shipwrecked sailors vomit in the night.
See, Danny’s puked and Matt’s about to heave!
Now Mel and Suze both blow chunks at the sight.
The slaves below decks chunder in the alley
While gastric reflux chains them to the galley.
VIII
But we can freeze the action for a start,
Cast Oberon-like spells upon the day.
We’ll turn now into statues by our art
This Hogarth canvas changed to mummer’s play.
And in this tableau emphasise a part;
A shy, still-sober sylph. What? Shall we say
A female of the species who has yet
A shred of self-respect with which to bet?
IX
For love’s like cards, and nearly the same thing;
A devil’s picture-book to the unskilled.
Now find the lady, now act like a king.
Now jack it in and go and buy some pills.
Or lay the queen, and stake your everything.
Or fold your hand and get coked to the gills.
Or wait with held breath, never looking back,
To find the card you know is in the pack.
X
But we must leave our frieze. We’ve had our fun.
We’ll bring our statuary back to life.
In art, just as in life, things left undone
Are present guarantors of future strife,
And acts not brought to happy conclusion
Can leave a scar as deep as any knife.
We’ll leave our coy coquette to keep our own
Appointment on the other side of town.
XI
Now rise up with us, every mother’s son,
Into the air and down into the ground.
We’ll ride the tube like bullets from a gun.
Along the ice-slick rails we’ll steam and pound.
We’re blowing east, towards the rising sun,
But where we go no sunlight will be found.
Though past Mile End, inside Victoria Park,
A Sunny Jim awaits us in the dark.
XII
So swing the iron gates and be inlet.
Victoria herself once stepped this way.
An empire where the sun would never set
Personified diminutively. They
Were never more correct than those who bet
The monarch seemed illuminate that day.
But royal light could not dispel the shade
That in our hero’s heart its beds has made.
I call him hero for he is my man.
The chosen one and, if it’s all the same,
What though his faults shine through for all they can?
It’s them that make him live up to the name
Of hero. Ah, but this too-short time span
Requires that infamy stand in for fame.
We live still in Elizabethan times.
Let’s cheer, not jeer, Elizabethan crimes.
XIV
Our boy is here on business, plies a trade,
A sink-estate apothecary he.
Supplier of the best narcotics made,
Of coke and skunk and speed and ecstasy.
He’ll give you ketamine (once he’s been paid).
He’ll even get you heroin. You see,
He holds a capitalist tenet firm;
That folk have too much money. Look and learn!
XV
By feral appointment he supplies the gear.
The journalists and media babes who buy
His wares approve. They love the thrill of fear,
They’ll gladly brave the darkness to get high.
They like to meet real people, and the peer
Group with which they, each one, identify
Thinks dealers are the salt of honest earth.
(The dealers struggle to contain their mirth).
XVI
Another evening’s trade has left for port
And we have seen our boy at his profession.
But now we’ll leave him to his night-time sport;
A chain of drinks and drugs in quick succession.
Well, one last look. There, in the darkness caught.
As dark a soul as ever took confession.
He seems quite made of night, part shade. In fact,
I think we’ll leave before we are attacked.
XVII
We’ll quit the park, forsake this cursed ground,
And head back to the city, racked with thought.
A heroine and hero we have found
And now can bring together. But we ought
To take care our bold match-making is sound,
Remember poesy lessons we were taught.
There just aren’t many words that rhyme with love.
Just dove and glove. Oh, and above. And shove.
XVIII
We’ll seek a perch to wonder if we can’t
Conspire to bring our ingénues together.
Should we transport them to a restaurant
Or place them in the midst of sweat and leather?
Or maybe just leave them to gallivant
And find if they are birds of common feather.
We’ll find a spot to think on what we’ve done,
Like Milton’s Satan brooding on the sun.
XIX
St. Paul’s still boasts its palatinate dome,
So here we’ll rest. It does bear pointing out
The poet has a choice of where to roam.
Authorial omnipresence, have no doubt,
Finds rules of time and space a brand-new home
And turns the laws of physics all about.
We’ll sit up here to wait for verses witty
And watch electric storms light up the city.
XX
A rose, so we are told by William S,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Whatever. Lack of proof may cause distress
And leave poor Allegory on the street.
But names may still be portals, none the less,
For our two changelings, just about to meet.
(Bill’s rose is odourless to me. A shame.
My sinuses are on the blink again).
XXI
He, Edmund Tuppence, his own servant all.
She, Sally Quicklake, wanting naught but love.
Oh, now I’ve gone and done it. I’m appalled.
I’ll need the few poor rhymes I note above.
There’s one. The poets cheat! The words they maul!
Like prove and grove and stove – and even Hove!
My poverty of rhyme will now be uplit
(And doubtless I’ll be damned for this poor couplet).
XXII
We are now further forward, heaven-blessed.
These names will single out this fated pair.
We’ll watch them now as Friday lays to rest
The alcoholic corpses, they who dare
To drink. Our pair? I venture to suggest
She sheds nocturnal tears; he gasps for air.
And as the dawn signs in another day,
We sense the part that destiny must play.
XXIII
It’s Saturday a.m. and heads have rolled
Along with eyes and every other part.
The ferryman will now his hand unfold
To take your coin. The palpitating heart
(Post-atrial fibrillation, truth be told)
Plays arrhythmic percussion when it starts.
But hardy souls already fill the snug
To fill the graves they’ve previously dug.
XXIV
But if it’s not too great an imposition
We’ll spend the morn with Sally, hear her sighs.
She’ll brush her hair while in a prone position
And wipe the sleepy-dust from out her eyes.
She’ll lunch with friends. Romantic inquisition!
They all have boyfriends; all her chums have guys.
There comes a bitter thought – it’s love, remember -
To wish those guys all burnt come next November.
XXV
But now she’s dressed and made up – all for us!
The world prepares itself for Sally’s visit.
She leaves her neat apartment, takes a bus,
And goes to meet her friends for lunchtime fizz. It
Has been noted she’s no soak. What fuss!
It really isn’t so surprising, is it?
She parties without London’s drunk detritus,
Prefers sobriety and won’t invite us.
XXVI
But, soft, I hear the typhoon rise on cue.
Quick! Grab my coat flaps! Now we’re on the move!
Authorial omnipresence may suit you;
I wish the mode of transport would improve.
But from the city’s east a pigeon coo,
That other player in this game of love.
I see I’ve started mixing half-rhymes. Damn!
So hang me for a sheep, not for a lamb.
XXVII
To Edmund Tuppence’s bedchamber now
(Our poetical wind has dropped us here).
Our anti-anti-hero takes a bow,
And muses on the morning. Never fear.
It will hold short-term benefit, here’s how:
With drugs and vodka, premium-strength beer.
He’s showered and shaved, a brand-new spliff is ready.
The very soul of excess, that’s our Eddie.
XXVIII
Now Edmund’s on the streets. Where first to call?
A trip to his accountant might be made.
And lest that sound too bourgeois for you all,
The man has more to do with turf than trade.
His money’s made through nag and leather ball.
They’re in! They’re off! And Edmund’s money’s laid.
Auspicious start as Bible Black romps in.
Ed pockets the delightful wage of sin.
XXIX
Eleven bells! The bolts are shot within
The tavern and the wine bar and the pub.
His tenner cocked, our boy is first man in,
No barmaid would this puckish entrant snub.
And Edmund knows which way the shuttle spins.
There is an indefatigable club
Composed of morning drinkers who believe
That membership is free; you pay to leave.
XXX
Each pub lives but one day and is reborn,
A very mayfly reincarnated.
And so the lunchtime kick-off ends the morn
And goals are scored and offsides are debated.
The afternoon slides by, the old men warn
Of Irish counties where once colleens waited.
But Edmund casts a wan sclerotic eye
O’er this fine example of hostelry.
XXXI
A hangover, when rattling at the gate,
Will always make the hangovee delirious.
The crapulous sensoria rule the state
And cast a ruinous wand with wave imperious.
That chemical imbalance can dictate
Might seem to non-drinkers a tad mysterious.
But Ed has little time for metaphysic;
In fifteen minutes’ time he’s due in Chiswick!
XXXII
He rides the tube – the very same we took –
And, like us, has no ticket. Not for him
The Kantian imperative. But look;
We’re not all perfect. Some might take a dim
View of the Konigsbergian’s small book
With that most famous ethical maxim;
To act as though your action were a law.
(That’s not the version Edmund Tuppence saw).
XXXIII
But while Ed thunders on through bowels of earth,
We’ll check on Sally sooner and not later.
The meal’s all done, the wine has led to mirth
(And will you check the arse out on that waiter!)
They’re all denouncing men for all they’re worth
As slobs and chauvinists and woman-haters.
Now, all this am-dram sociology
Reminds me - I owe an apology.
XXXIV
When I said ‘every mother’s son’ back there
I’ve been advised that I forgot the daughter.
Before the ardent feminists declare
Your prim narrator don’t know what he oughter,
And shrill-voiced redbrick harpies fill the air
With shrieks and invitations to the slaughter,
I’ll just defend myself and say that girls
Compared with swinish boys are always pearls.
XXXV
And Sally is a pearl (though in her shell)
Worth all her tribe. And now she says goodbye
To Tamsin and Annette and Annabelle.
How best to make the afternoon go by?
A long slow bath? A soak au naturelle?
How nice to have a man to make it fly!
It’s not the time to be so sentimental;
She needs a taxi cab that’s up for rental.
XXXVI
A hundred yards away, around the block,
Young Edmund Tuppence steps into the light.
He’s met with folk who should be under lock
And key, and would, if caught there bang to rights.
But as a dealer Ed won’t be defrocked,
He knows too much to share the old lag’s plight.
For Edmund’s done his weekend shop again;
He’s carrying a kilo of cocaine.
XXXVII
Now Edmund too needs four-wheeled transportation.
He needs to visit several ports of call
And doesn’t care for bus stop or for station
When loaded with narcotic wherewithal.
A beggar begs him for a small donation
But Ed does not do charity at all.
He stops to boot the fellow up the jacksy
As, round the corner, Sally hails a taxi.
XXXVIII
Young Miroslav sees Sally there and blinks
And brings his Audi to a skidding halt.
Should be a decent fare, the young Pole thinks,
And not a bad babushka. Who can fault
An immigrant who works and scarcely drinks
And over petty regulation vaults?
Allow this Slav to drive and to be free,
With no insurance, tax or MOT.
XXXIX
As Sal climbs in and states her destination
The Pole takes off as if he is on pole
Position as he hurtles past the station,
And Sally prays for her immortal soul.
To stop at red he has no inclination.
One-way means nought; young Miro’s on a roll.
The road is free of all save Edmund Tuppence
Who seems about to get a harsh come-uppance.
XL
A car crash is a far from pleasant sight,
And all the worse when human flesh is struck.
I feel quite queasy. Do you think I might
Eschew the details? But young Edmund’s luck
Now seems run out. No more for him the fight?
The driver leaves, not one to take the buck.
This cabbie’s anxious not to stand and jaw;
He plies his trade some way outside the law.
XLI
Now Miroslav has fled the scene and Sally
Is left alone with Edmund’s silent form.
To check if Death has added to his tally
She touches Edmund’s cheek and finds it warm
And more than warm. Behind her, from the alley
Emerge two shady, undernourished forms.
Are these two vengeful spirits sent from Hell?
No, just two addled addicts. Can’t you tell?
XLII
This brace of junkies lope towards the scene
Like jackals drawn to offal on the veldt.
They scent narcotics. Both this pair have seen
Young Edmund as a dealer who has dealt
Around this postcode. They themselves have been
Recipients of smack from Eddie’s belt.
But now they see what they have long desired;
A dealer for whom cash is not required.
XLIII
A horizontal Edmund views the scene
As though without his body, from above,
Oh, now I’ve really torn it. What I mean
Is that I’ve limited my rhymes to ‘dove’
And all the rest. Ah, well. You will have seen
The list by now, and know it includes love.
And where love is all things may still be well.
But let’s return to where young Edmund fell.
XLIV
Now ‘streetwise’ is a modern epithet
Reserved for feral children and rude boys.
And, wise as Sally is, let’s not forget
Her upbringing’s suburban. It annoys
Her that she is an ingénue, and yet
She stands with equanimity and poise.
She won’t allow these predators their prey,
And stands defiantly right in their way.
XLV
The taller of the junkies curls his lip
And bares dull teeth all stained with methadone.
He plucks a length of piping from a skip
And stalks towards our Sal, who stands alone.
She’ll not retreat, back off, or backwards trip;
She’s drained a draught of bravery unknown.
Just as the situation turns to black,
Salvation comes about behind her back.
XLVI
For Edmund’s wholesale druggist views the scene
From out his window. Like Greek tragedy
The play unfolded, every action seen
By Royal Mullins, bouncer and bouncee.
He trundles down the stairs and clearly means
To knock some heads together and, you see,
The needle merchants know they cannot thump
Three hundred pounds of doorman with the hump.
XLVII
The opiated shades fade into dark
And leave poor Sal to face this seething hulk.
But Royal Mullins has a soft spot, mark,
He has a heart of gold despite his bulk.
He warns off the departing junkies, hark;
They’re off now in a poppy-sponsored sulk.
Now Royal Mullins is in charge of all,
Whips out a mobile phone and makes a call.
XLVIII
In minutes flat a Mondeo arrives
(Though not the ambulance that Sally sought).
With Edmund on the ninth of his nine lives,
To hospital is really where he ought
To go. But Royal Mullins now connives
To banish A&E from Sally’s thought.
Can Sal suggest a place where he’ll be fine?
To which she says; “I’ll put him up at mine”.
XLIX
The deal is done, and Royal’s done his bit.
He hoists young Edmund carwards, pops him in.
The driver takes instruction. Sally sits
Beside unconscious Edmund, who begins
To murmur and to stir. But what is it
He says? Now Sally Quicklake is on pins.
The driver carries Edmund up the stairs
And outs him on the bed, absolved of cares.
L
Now night has drawn a cloak o’er London Town
Which is, as always, quite the perfect fit.
The roller-blinds on jewellers’ shops are down,
Kebabs have ceased to spin upon the spit.
The sky is darker than a bailiff’s frown.
The tidal Thames is filling, bit by bit.
And now through tasteful shutters we may peep
And watch a woman watch a man asleep.
End of Canto the First
