Old houses lean,

Old houses lean,

Together

In tired rows

A dowdy collection

Alongside the sharp-edged

Steel and glass

Handily placed

Just a stone's throw away,

In a slice of good fortune

Throwable

Stones litter the ground.

Council-led initiatives

Lie in disrepair

Boarded windows

Hold back tears.

It is a wilderness

All the people have gone

Too much office space

The corporation

Has eaten itself.

On the river

An early morning mist

Billows like

Smoke in Pudding Lane

And I walk barefoot

Lost in bewilderment

At the wilderness

Of civilisation.

It is all too easy

To remark upon

The pointlessness

Of accumulation

When so much

Beauty is stolen

In the process.

We who travel

In hope

Left our humanity

In lost luggage

At Waterloo station

Where it will stay

Under lock and key

Until the clock

Strikes

And the world starts up again

Reset

To the beginning