A Fractured View

Swans row the sky just feet above the copper water. Gulls twist their necks to watch a lone sailor on the prow of a sludge-decked dredger. On the slate thatched gambrels of a lesser known roofs spotters search for night bombers, the figures have turned to stone as do all oft repeated passages from dog-eared scripts. London growls under the axels of diesel driven dreams. A stork has visited an attic full of discarded toys bells ring out for new born sales. Barges reek still, just as when sweat was as common as dirt. A window in Baker street opens to let pipe smoke out, it uncoils in the air like a left handed genie. Tower bridge drops upward, to quarantine all gawkers. Meat mongers return to their blood-soaked cradles before the dawns leery light. The city is a fable, It is aflame with tall buses that never were the same, yet there is sea oil seeping from the tunnels and runnels, where entrenched gutter snipers lie low. Here in the denizen dinge the sure footed dead avoid being seen by the googly eyes of alien robots, tin manikins that crab-walk along Regents Street barking Chinese commands at oppressed corgis and other less compliant drones. On what was once Speakers Corner hunched pavement artists dribble into the chalky cracks between showcased hoopla’s. Slyly the loitering snollygosters, lollygaggers and stumblebums, crane their ductile necks to see shell games in full view even as they vanish.