I walk
, like you want to,
through streets
of sad & blue.

busy the parts dressed in
festive lights came to brush
my shoulder. but I cannot
afford to stay too long

as
walking

it calls me, alone, &
weeping, answer its
despair up darkened building streets.

best not to be caressed
by the men-with-nothing-to-lose
where, in stormy underpasses,
they stare & sneer, where
breaking men & broken
women argue in the street.

This is my city, it has me
in its grey pocket.

me, pressed
against the glass
of a
kebab shop from
spinning
blue copper lamps
that blare
quietlessly.

this businessman stiff
is limp at weekends
, freckled with
tourists & no-shows.
let us go, though alone,
not ready quite yet to
achieve our flats
if the Thames
recedes over the fragments
of its muddy crackle, where
we – who used to love
– kept up our sleeves the
radial thumbs
of Blackfriars.

raise your collar
to the wind. the last
bookshop in town is
now glowingly closing
with a curvaceous and bloodied
skull, tightly bandaged,
locked up inside; here,
where the forces of
nature obey architects
old & young, parched & silicon.

I am
a disastrous
lover, boxed
up here to die.
exactly what I have to gain
I find in the dark alleyways
of my saunter:
please take me back.

& at home, damp
or a little tired,
the last light in flats
opposite, is just so:
flicking humming flick flickering.