Croydon on a Sunday morning

The sky is cloudy - it's always either
Overcast or boiling -
In Croydon.
The old closk strikes ten as shopgirls
Open blinds and pull up iron safety-grids
Yawning in the watery sunlight
Comparing shoes and hair.
Outside the Ship of Fools they're sluicing
Last night's sodden sagas off the pavement,
Relieved to find nothing more than the gutters broken.
Street sellers stamp their feet and sip burnt coffee
Calling candyfloss! Penny sweets! merry-go-round!
Seagulls begging on Blackpool beach
Could not imagine such a sound.
Grizzled buskers strike up wailing classics
Hardened tones which seep deep into the consciousness of the scene
It peels the red-faced drunks off the
Disreputable sidewalks and into seedy taverns
Where for a while they might forget that
Real Life stinks of London and cheap cigarettes.
The girl in a hot pink coat, skinny jeans and boots
Strides along, fluting on her phone
Her french manicure fakes click-clicking
Against those Gucci knock-off sunglasses,
the famed Croydon facelift is clear under layers of powder.
I want to shout out how much she
Effortlessly epitomises Croydon
In all it's forced phantasmagorical hard glamour.
But in Croydon, you don't talk to strangers.
Last winter's old street precher is dead
His familiar face scorned coffee-shops
Relying on the warmth of the Lord instead
They come and go.
But this one - something special,
Maybe there was a spark of something divine in his smile
Though his teeth had long since turned black.
When he died we mourned like we did
The day that Snow White first discovered crack.

From behind my shop till I can see the world
In all it's glory.
The first few shoppers eagerly clacking along in cork heels,
Cahsing away lost city-grey pigeons,
The salesmen in their cheap suits
Blow blue smoke rings
Snatching surrepticious puffs of their Forbidden Fruit,
Picking at the back door's peeling paint
Inhaling urgently.
The monolithic grey-suited security guards
Usher along the one old man who,
Resplendent in his surgical sandals,
Refuses to leave the perfume shop
Or the lacquered Sunday girl behind the counter.
Croydon on a Sunday morning is dangerous, urbane
It will continue to be so for as long as the spiders
Scuttle back into the woodwork
To hide from the rising sun.

Hopeful.