Limehouse Lament

As bold as an opening batsman, stands the wild, ex colonial boy.
His face could have been carved out of close grained teak.
With him on the street you just can't feel relaxed.
Insubordination glows like a radiation, as his eyes shift rapidly this way and that.
Maturing sinew flexing under a Lonsdale sweatshirt.
He waits alone as the early autumn night draws in.
Hopes and ambitions setting slowly in cement.
Limehouse lament.

Dim lights glow, behind a dirty steamed window of the kebab house.
Next door to The Londoner, boarded up, closed after all these years.
Perfect scenery for the drawn out faces of young east end school girls.
Scurrying home after a netball match.
Home, to look after little brother, while Mum does her cleaning job.
A role she will forever resent.
Limehouse lament.

The unrecognised oral epigrams hopelessly lost in the early evening mist.
Doubtlessly cast to meander forever unchallenged.
As does everything that is vague.
And the weightlessness of dreams, escaping the gravitational pull of this awful reality.
Drifting out through the stratosphere.
Perhaps someday, they will make someone happy.
But today, cry pity for the dreamer.
For so long as he continues to waken from the dream,
he shall never feel content in this,
Limehouse lament.


Capability Red 1983