London Flashback

London is a craven haven for corrupting taste.
Police motorbikes were being chased by the waste.
I spent a year down there after my degree -
even slept rough – but didn’t feel that free.
The riots were lootings: Christmas on earth
didn’t follow on in the town of my birth.
I busked for next to nothing, saw old friends
but abandoned ship – my each adventure tends
to me crawling home, puking, apologising profusely
to inward grace – senses broken loosely -
and now I sit sipping tea at the foot of the fell,
in a large country house not ready to sell.
There’s a beck in the back and we’re agreed
I am even allowed to write of it if I need -
no Poetry Police who have never read any
poetry will stop me, although not for a penny
I have worked for them… and I cast my mind back
to the daughters of London. The Plough and Black
Combe had aligned by the time I went down.
I lived in the East, it was like an undertown.
I drifted and loafed and smoked too much.
A Londoner by birth, I still am one as such -
but no longer hang with the cutting edge crowd -
I guess they wander lonely inside the cloud!
And no I didn’t pull when I was on holiday,
except a gay experience, though I walked away...
and soon had a dream bigger than a dream,
for which the gnomic nomenclature is “drum,”
characterised by cosmic freedom, bounding
in circles in space. Already daggers of lightning
in the storm were part of a God Simulation;
and I woke feeling cleansed, with re-aligned perception.
Still, back to the sticks, I came by rattling train
unsure if I will ever make it down there again. 

John F B Tucker
 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, John F B Tucker would be pleased to hear them.