I toss salad

I toss salad

Healthily green

Toasted pine nuts

To add bite to the Pesto

Quaffing Shiraz from a wide-bottomed glass

With a slender stem.

I remember VP Sherry

From Threshers

Drunk

Straight from the bottle

With a couple of old wino’s

On a wall

By the cemetery

Where we would sleep

In a heap

Outside, under the stars.

Underage buskers

Hustling for a few coppers

To buy a fry-up

In an all-night cafe

Full of streetwalkers.

Sweet old girls smoking

Broken cigarettes

Pulled out of a plastic bag.

There were exotic dancers

From the clubs in Dean Street

Women who were good mothers

To street kids

Living in dark alleys

Trying to avoid degenerates

With their promises

Of a hot bath

And soft sheets.

Women who asked nothing in return

For giving a skinny teen

A bacon sandwich

Or an egg roll

Where did they all go?

I stifled the thought

When it is obvious

They were going nowhere

Nor was I

Until I woke up

To myself

At least I climbed out of the shit

Even if it still clings to my boots.

The smell hangs around

On the bad days

If I breathe too deeply

The memory of another future

Disrupts the present.

The beep of a timer

Breaks the moment

The trout is cooked

It is a long way from a piece of cod

In batter

Eaten straight off the paper

When you could catch up

On the sports results

Before the print ran.

Weirdly, I catch my breath

On the faint tang

Of malt vinegar

Where the hell did it come from?

I haven’t tasted Sarsons

In an age.

Which might be no bad thing,

As my mother said,

Too much of it will dry the blood.

As if.