Street Level

Here’s glass in your eye!
Here’s a bottle
Across the back of your neck!

People make palaces
Of tube stations.
Short on rations.

People swarm at night
To the places full of sound and light.
Street demons.

Homeless people sit
Hungry, dirty, living not by wit.
Surviving on the fuel
Of alcohol.

The night-owls race around town
And indulge.
We are securely in the bulge
Of life’s belly.

Tramps roam aimlessly, smelly,
Begging, apologising – not really expecting
The price of a cup of tea.

Colourful shop-fronts: inside,
People smile, feeding.
Satisfied.

Covered in street-dirt, homeless hands
Root through shit-filled bins:
Waste that supports the life-farce
Of an underground race.

Civilization.

The most advanced world
On the planet
Has its winners and losers;

Those that we no longer see
Because they’re as common as buses
Or trains, and just as much
A part of the city furniture –
Superstructure.

They bed down on stone, cold
Tile, hard wood, short sparse grass,
Cardboard, rags,
Flesh and bone.

Their eyes are full of loss, pain,
The disintegration of a once brilliant brain;

Their faces are sad, lost, each one
Like a ghost. We dismiss
Them.
They irritate, pester, ruin our nice cosy
Lives, and remind us of the imperfections
Of this society.

We don’t want to know.

Wide ___________________________ _berth.

Go away, you creatures of the night,
You animals of the earth:
Crawl back into your holes,
Get out of my sight.

Who wants to go clubbing?