The big smoke had always been around
Its fingers the veins running through our wrists
Bluer and firmer as we pranced across the stage like Gods
Its voice this summer was sweeter than honey
And we could resist no longer
A train
Four hours and we had escaped this place's grey-green discolouration
The sun held London as though it were his child
His heart warmed our cheeks and twinkled in the river
But stars shone in the sequins
Of the queens at the palace
Theatre
Perched, ready to laugh or cry or dance
Nestled like chicks in the velvet seats
We were home.
Innocent weavers
Sat still mourning –
The siren heralded
At midnight
The emergency swords in the rafter
Like a lone early morning cock.
The forest was a terror spot
Helter-skelter in blood-discolouration
Marking a nest of the free?
Terror & anger clashed
Again & again
In man rearing the seeds of the night:
Shrewd pebbles of inviolable intents
And mutilated feathers in a battered nest!
Bleach floods over British Empire blues
Prussian wealth fragmenting into rust
Ochre pouring from the distilleries of eyes
Hidden downturned under peek-a-boo fringes
The lustre of ink wells overflowing where
The sun never sets. Lace and horses make
A violent mix like sulphuric acid, a maggot
Eating at the Boadicea face of pooling silk
Like the flag of an Antoinette bourgeoisie
A touch above the socket, dark in their discolouration
Hearty in their malcontent, those peek-a-boo girls
Tying ribbons on sheep transformed into roaring lions
A maypole of bondage, the Spitfire flies.