17 Colville Terrace

Voices voices in the night,
sirens, the swish of passing cars;
drunks spill out from closing bars,
shouts, broken glass, another fight.

I shrug but show no pity
having heard these stories all before;
my thoughts flow to another shore,
distant serendipity.

There is no silence any more,
you cannot see stars from city streets;
syncopation, no pattern to the beats,
an itch, well-scratched, becomes a sore.

Even stark leafless trees look sad,
set out in rows away from fields;
hints of nature act as city shields
to keep things bearable, not so bad.

It's hard not to live where in fact you live,
reluctance surrounds all major change;
lives run in a swift but narrow range,
we yearn to receive but learn to give.

Hotel

I loved her beyond all reason
and then she went and bloody well died on me.
I stroll over to her grave and give it a kick.
Bitch. Some cops with cameras
believe they're hiding behind the headstones
but that's all right. 'Sall all right, orright?
I'll go over to Spain tomorrow
with my red and yellow bandana
and there I'll do what I canna
do here. No more of this useless bleedin shite,
I'll stay off the beer and act polite.
I'll buy ... a hotel. Yeah, what the hell!
Can I show you to your table, Mon Sewer?
Yeah, I'd like that:
a white dinner jacket, a red cummerbund,
a smile with the new white choppers,
a Heckler and Koch in my sock.
I'll need to keep the Brits out, got no clarse,
I'll dump them gobshites on their arse.
Ah, Britain, she's been good to me all the same
since I left burnt-down blasted Croatia
but the face you see is not the face
that smiled up from my mother's knee
when that dirty old brute she called my father,
before he legged it, told me something crystal true:
under the sun, my son, there is nothing new,
kick 'em in the balls before they kick you.
My father, the philosopher:
a litle tear, my dear, runs down my nose,
must be the cocaine, 95% pure,
unlike the crap I sell to the punters,
the ho's and shunters, the human manure.
Voila, Madame! Ho ho, Monsieur!
Is everyssing to your shatisfaction?
Ahem, ahem, more Chateau d'Yquem?
Buzzbuzz, hahaha, humhum.
She's young and flushed, he's old and fat,
an aristocrat: thus the world operates
and circulates, I know that. Watch me, chum.
I could do this job with my eyes closed.