Category: Urban

Longhold Tenancy

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6 cats

Longhold Tenancy

A neighbour, it was, who alerted us,
Alerted himself by the muffles within –
Apologising for making a fuss,
“I’m no busybody, and she’s hardly kin,
That’s why it took me this long to call –
If only I knew my neighbours at all.”

I worked for the landlord’s agent, so
I grabbed my coat and signed-out keys
And hopped on a passing 220
To Fulham, above the Cantonese,
Lift not working, second floor,
With a gentle tap upon the door –

No reply, except some mewing –
So I rapped again, then risked the lock,
Announcing myself and what I was doing –
A sudden guest can be quite a shock.
Nobody home (though the stench was strong) –
It turned out I was very wrong.

She sat upon her sofa, asleep,
With two cats guarding her, agitated,
The kitchen another three cats deep,
And a sixth who snuck in while I waited,
Calico, Siamese, blacks and tawny,
Most of them hissing, all of them scrawny.

I knelt down beside the tenant then,
Gently touched the back of her hand –
The coldness a jolt, but I touched her agen,
And all I could think of was all I’d got planned
For that afternoon – all now postponed,
While windows were opened and constables phoned.

The cats were making ev’rything harder,
They’d made a mess, and were clearly starving –
I found some tins of food in the larder,
The way they fell upon it was jarring.
Flies aplenty upon the ceilings,
I fought down all my nauseous feelings.

The undertakers had taken her
By six, so careful and so unblinking.
I stayed away in the kitchen, shaken,
Stroking the cats to stop from thinking.
The PCs left the place to me,
The neighbour popped-in with a cup of tea.

“I don’t think she had family, really,
Kept herself alone, poor mite,
Except her cats, she loved them dearly –
What’ll become of them, tonight ?”
I scooped one up to work her charms,
Into his unexpecting arms.

Another neighbour took another,
I badgered the landlord to take a brace,
And one to my less-than-happy mother,
And as for the last, she’s at my place –
This job, right down to its chromosomes,
Is all about providing homes.

Vaguely Georgian

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identikit avenue

Vaguely Georgian

When I rail against the bland sterility of Modern style,
Then this is not the antidote I seek !
These cut-and-pasted noddy-boxes miss the measure by a mile,
With all the mumbled sorries of the meek.
Sure, their bricks are red, their roofs are pitched, their gables high and wide,
But why the chimney-pots, for goodness sake ?
Windows (though they’re never sashed) may these days keep the warmth inside,
But why must all their glazing bars be fake ?
All wrapped around such tiny rooms of hollow studs and plasterboard
Which any neighbour’s sound can penetrate –
And basements don’t exist, nor anywhere luggage can’t be stored,
And the ceilings are so low, they suffocate.
Of course, compared with houses of the past, they have a lot to offer –
Plumbing, carpets, wires and insulation –
But still they’re easy prey for ev’ry Brutalist and Bauhaus scoffer,
As these clones have spawned across the nation.
But worst of all, these mega-builders have the blueprints on their books
Of many variations on the theme –
And yet, in any field, they seem so terrified to mix the looks
Incase there’s fewer profits left to cream.
And oversighting councillors, with targets jacked and budgets slashed,
Are powerless or spineless to allay.
And so this new Jerusalem is jerry-built and pebble-dashed –
And yet, still beats a high-rise any day !

Breakfast in the Ruins

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post apocalypse

Breakfast in the Ruins

This !  This is the time that I’ve been waiting for,
When the cars leave the street and the planes leave the sky,
And only the zombies are joining my morning,
While sensible people are waiting to die.

And I – I am a rare survivor,
Finally special – finally alone –
Scrabbling the rubble of civilisation,
Shaking off every habit I’ve known.

I never said my fantasies were pleasant,
Wiping out humanity with barely a shrug –
But there they lurk, just itching for apocalypse –
Not some ugly famine, but a quick and silent bug.

Do I feel bad, now something has happened,
Has finally happened !, to strangers I never knew ?
Though I’ve wished worse in my listless hours –
But wishing is safe, for they never come true.

I can tell myself that it’s all coincidence –
Out of my hands to cause it, or to repair –
So I might as well relish the sudden upheaval
If this is our doom, then I’ll guess I’ll see you there.

But thanks to the efforts of folks far nicer,
We’ll prob’ly survive this, and prob’ly forget.
And I will be just one more drudge on the treadmill,
Still dreaming disaster to spin the roulette.

Aerialatrix

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girl with towers
Finding Myself by Cassia Arellano

Aerialatrix

Skyla McLeod, her parents named her,
Hoped to shoot her to the top –
Alas, the ev’ryday has claimed her,
Clipped her wings and let her drop.
She’s just a loser in the sky,
Although she knows it’s all a mock –
For now she only reaches high
By living in a tower block.

Skyla McLeod in her fairy-tower,
Watching the tiny people go,
Pretending that she has the power
To interrupt their to-and-fro.
But still, her life is not so grim,
When comes her prince, at the end of his shift –
Then she’ll let down her hair for him,
And he’ll ascend (though in the lift).

Bottom of the Barrel

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organ grinder
The Organ Grinder by Vasily Perov

Bottom of the Barrel

I saw an organ grinder and his capuchin the other day –
He made an awful racket, and the monkey didn’t want to play,
And no surprise !, the poor bedraggled creature looked a broken thing,
Half-starved and half-exhausted, on a short and fraying string.
The organist was little better – no musician with a skill –
He simply turned the handle to produce the loud and flat and shrill.

I ought to add, this wasn’t in a smart and swanky part of town,
Because the rich have constables to move them on and shut them down.
Instead, they haunt the humble in the poorest, foulest thoroughfare,
In begging half a penny from the folks who haven’t one to spare.
But still I stopped, and watched that doleful monkey, as his master hawked,
And wondered what he might have dreamt of, if he only could have talked…

“I’d rather be a monkey than an organ grinder, any day –
We monkeys gets to leap and dance, and gen’rally to have our way,
And sport a hand-made uniform, and all the grapes that we can eat,
And always play to cheering crowds from Berkeley Square to Gower Street.
And yet the world is quick to view me as a lackey or buffoon –
But grinders only get to grind, and grind, and grind all afternoon.”

I saw an organ grinder and his capuchin the other day –
And shared a knowing look, we three, of how they’d soon be swept away.

Middle-Class Decline

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people in train
Photo by Rishiraj Singh Parmar on Pexels.com

Middle-Class Decline

The world goes by on its way to work,
Quite happy – well happy enough, anyway –
Where poetry books are barely a quirk,
So little do they enter the fray
Of the working world in its working week
To render it a freak to thus
See one being read on the bus.
With sales so low and style so high,
They see no need to try to fathom out
Just what some faff-about is trying to say.
Those pseudy slims are best ignored
By the sensibly-shod of the hurrying horde
On a busy and bullshit-less day.

What they need is football, and punk rock, and thrillers,
And X-Box, and coffee, and soaps, and painkillers
And roses, and downloads, and sheds full of spanners,
And gardens with blue tits, and holiday planners,
And magazine fashions and diet’ry trends
And so many relatives, hook-ups and friends,
So is it a wonder they haven’t the time
For the nuance of slam or the absence of rhyme ?
And the world goes by on its way back home,
Too busy for chapbooks of monochrome.

Christmas Bells

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Photo by Irek Marcinkowski on Pexels.com

Christmas Bells

The churches used to ring-in Christmas Day,
With peels that rolled across the shires,
And towns with out-competing spires.
They may chime still, but who’s to say ?
Amid our busy, noisy lives,
The traffic and the nine-to-fives,
We’ve little use for summonses to pray.
For all the bells may toll the blues,
We never come to fill the pews –
But if we hear them chiming, that’s okay.
And if we don’t, well, never fear,
There’s plenty other bells to hear:
On doors and tills and phones, they ring away.
And even though we see no snow,
And even though we see no deer,
We cannot help but hear the ever-tinkle of the sleigh.

Commuter Without Portfolio

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photo of suitcase on leaves
Photo by fotografierende on Pexels.com

Commuter Without Portfolio

Where’s my briefcase ?  What a caper,
What a stupid thing to lose.
Therein lay my evening paper,
Now I cannot read the news.
Whoops, there goes my blue Bic biro,
Gosh, there goes my travel card –
Not much pickings here, I know,
It’s not a case for Scotland Yard.

So who are you, thief or finder ?
Did I cast a wealthy look ?
Could you post my gas reminder
And return my library book ?
Just ignore my works’ outpouring
Bureaucratic paperchase.
So, you see, I’m pretty boring,
Pretty much an average case.

A Norse Discourse

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trafalgar

A Norse Discourse

What shall we get for London, Ingrid,
Now that the Yuletide’s near ?
What shall we get for London, Ingrid ?
We’re almost out of year.

What do they want in London, Ingmar,
The city that has it all ?
What do they need in London, Ingmar ?
Can’t we give them a call ?

We want it to be a surprise, dear Ingrid,
We want it to impress.
We want to surprise old London, Ingrid,
We don’t want them to guess.

What did we get them last year, Ingmar ?
What did we get them then ?
What did we think of last year, Ingmar,
And can’t we get that agen ?

Last year we gave them a pine-tree, Ingrid,
Last year we gave them a spruce.
They’re surely expecting a pine-tree, Ingrid,
We can’t this year, by deuce !

But surely they loved our pine-tree, Ingmar,
Surely they loved our spruce ?
And won’t they need a new tree, Ingmar ?
It only has one use !

It’s true, they loved our pine-tree, Ingrid,
It’s true they loved it there.
They proudly placed our pine-tree, Ingrid,
In Trafalgar Square.

Then let’s give a tree to London, Ingmar,
A symbol of our rebirth.
Then let’s give a tree to London, Ingmar:
From Oslo – peace on Earth !

It’s just such a shame how we go on to treat this gift each year…

Fear & Statistics

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cobbles

Fear & Statistics

Have you heard how crime is falling,
Muggings at an all-time low ?
Murders, rapes, are miniscule
Compared with fifty years ago.
So when you’re walking back tonight,
The odds are very much in favour
Of you getting home alright.

So when the shadows rustle
And your heartbeats dance a jitterbug,
You’re almost surely not about
To face a psycho or a thug.
The cold wind sighs, the lone fox yelps,
But rest assured you’re probably okay –
I hope that helps.