Leaning into the shadows

Leaning into the shadows

Underneath the window

Dark-eyed Sally

Smoked a cigarette

Battlefield style

Afraid of taking a light

From a secondhand match

As if the roadworks

Were the trenches of Flanders

There is a great divide

Too difficult to cross

Even in daylight

As dangerous to negotiate

As a minefield

Wreathed in colourful distraction

Music is alive

With hidden meaning

It drifts in and out of lamplight

Precocious melodies

Mingling with the doom of weekend

Anarchists

Marshalling poetry as a weapon

To shock absent parents

Old jazz riffs seep out

Through broken windows

Charlie Parker meets Leadbelly

To scuffle in the grime

And illuminate pinched faces

Grey from exposure

To the cold

Trying to keep frozen fingers nimble

Beating out a rhythm on a cardboard box

Breathless Slim

Whispers bloodied words

Razor-sharp in a cut-throat world

There is tension in the air

Until he reaches the bridge

When Sally rattles

Out no to rehab

With a jagged voice

Full of broken glass

She is the forces sweetheart

Underneath the arches

Fallen men remember old flames

As street sounds blend

Into the applause of curtain calls

The clash of stage doors

As west-end Johnnies

With tattoos in strange places

Step outside

To clear the alleyways

For left-leaning

Socially conscious luvvies

To leave the building

Without stumbling across

The unpleasantness

Of real-world detritus

Pushed back into the dirty corners

Of the street.