It is strange to sit here
It is strange to sit here
Remembering the touch of your hand
Resting upon my arm as we walked,
The smell of China Town in the rain
The noise of traffic on Shaftesbury Avenue
So many voices
Talking in different languages
Laughing in English
Watching the faces of buttoned-up men
In business suits
Wondering what had happened to the country
Since they left school
Forgetting how all nations think that they are great
As Russia and America stand in different corners
Like classroom bullies
Trigger fingers twitching
When there isn’t even communism to blame
What is the point of America
When the best of it has forgotten what it stood for
The last of the British Empire
Still looks pretty in pink
But the good old boys
Champagne Charlies
Shifty snifters snorting lines
Of privilege by the bucket load
In the restroom of the Moonshine Saloon
Swapping taglines from Hollywood movies,
As the proles walk by
On the heels of Mary Ann Nicholls
On a Jack the Ripper tour,
Still think they have bought the keys
To the drinks cabinet
Nothing more is known of the killers
Of democracy
When voters choose a party animal
Over the guy with the bad teeth,
You and I were always one step ahead
Of the rainbow
How many times do I turn
The pages of a book and imagine
It has all been read before
Nothing is ever as it was,
Even as the Eastend funeral procession
With the plumed horses and ornate carriage
Passes by
Leaving horseshit on the last fully cobbled
Street this side of Whitechapel
Mirroring an image of Reggie Kray
Complete with whimsical references
Pretending everything was better
In the days the twins ran the streets
It is too easy to forget corruption
Is a growth industry
People are the same the whole world over
It is only systems that jam up the works
Or was that something I saw written
In blood on the wall of a toilet
In Shoreditch
When gentrification stopped short
Of Bethnal Green
And the last time I heard bells in Bow
Was for last orders
Gentlemen, if you please