Bastard London! & four other poems by Saira Viola

Bastard London! (A drunken Sermon delivered by Rebel John Homeless Preacher – 4Am July 31st)

‘London is a bastard!
In Leicester Square
Rebel John homeless preacher delivers his sermon
from a makeshift pulpit
outside an ice cream parlour
Some say the wiry long haired blackcoat
has lost his mind others embrace his chaotic diatribe.
‘Who’s listening to me ?’ Rebel John yells
Answers his own question through splintered teeth:
‘There are almost bare -assed cherry sweetie cutie pop teens
grind winding electric- lit side streets
dressed in poly satin shimmer
bosom tops and mini skirts
Everyone stares at them
Right or wrong
Their strawberry cheeked innocence gone gone gone!
They are pointy shoe office- worker shirker ‘s midday fant- a- fuck
Damson lips pillow pout ages terms and prices
In the shadows you can hear the peppered hiss of Bessim
their thorn tongued Albanian pimp
London is a sly disguise
A bitch! Frankenstein’s mistress!
Her red lick stick wetting up
swinging her ankles from Blackfriars’s Bridge
wiping her clit for business
London a cloud of crippled pigeons
on a fatherless tower block
An acid attack on a kohl eyed hijabi
Yesterday’s kung po chicken
A pair of period stained grass green panties lying in the street
London you’re a thread of hope to a half burned Syrian refugee
But two whiskey punches on a black afro haired teen
Cold blooded capitalist king
Left me with two limp legs and sick- dick urine
Welcome to the starry lips of commerce
pedalling smooth tongued scams and misery
London will wed you
to debt for perpetuity
Read a suicide sonnet from the Gherkin
Saw a swiped wallet on the Northern line
And a peeping tom with red- moon eyes
I’m drunk! Drunk!! Drunk!
On your greasy plate of riches and cunt
London! Fucking London! Choking on a
toilet slurp of English Defence League HATE
A cathedral of broken promises
And wiggly finger pointing hypocrisy
Royston’s colonial grandpa shows a
white gloved hand behind the palace window
You’re a bleeding thumb in Whitehall
A parliament of crooks
London!The people trusted you!
Yes you! Bare knuckled wrestling bailiff
defecating on my porch
Stole my home! My rights my sacred ounce of dignity
Socially cleansed jewel of inequality
Just a moped hit and run
A re -used syringe a perforated ear drum
Beware the river Thames swollen with sewage -the bitter blood of lost souls and dead fish
London you ‘re a cocaine spreadsheet
stapled to Steve the banker’s pumper dump
I know dirty Keith charges £50 quid a high
Brixton Baz can offer pingers peelers and e bombs to sweeten the ride
London you’re still a Dickensian hangover
Voguing cabaret singer clowning around outside
The Royal Courts of Injustice
A hot spank on that cross dressing Judge’s lacy pink g string
An anti immigration van spot -checking a ‘Muslim’
looking man
A Downtown Abbey class reunion
Fuckedupedyness in a hipster’s cup
Viceland rebellion all dressed up
A bloviated dinner guest who guffaws at racist jokes
A golden ladder to paradise
but only for the darling rich-
three spoons of Beluga caviar at the Dorchester
Mouth wide open for Promenade deals with lawyers and fixers
London how will you feed another crying bouquet of blacktop babies?
You are the crusted eye of depression when the day stands still
All big talk and promises
An ad man’s bubble wrapped fantasy
A drain of motionless bodies –
Sleeping on cardboard boxes
London your walls are sighing
There is a non stop train of dissension
Sprouting weedy pockets of rebellion
But is it enough to change?
Enough to grow a conscience?
London – a beam of silver I once believed in
Now my book of tears
A bowl of nothing .’

Abracadabra on West Forty Third – A Short story about Christmas Eve

The cracking -biting -grey -sick -lips of Winter
bruising the old and the poor
slapping their purple frost -bitten faces with gusts of wind
infecting cuts – drowning lesions
A river of septicaemia
The curly bob tailed boils of weeping pus
ensconced in folds of fingers and toes
And the tea coloured wheeze of a tiny tot
shivers – all alone
On the pages of Glamocracy
Stylish poses in ski suits and goggles
against a backdrop of Hollywood snow, and look there’s
Father Christmas – has he avoided the old, white patriarch tag
Sleighing all over town –
a rascal of elves in tow?
Would it be wrong to criticise the monoracial scenery
of the jet set in Klosters and Courchevel?
The world’s slopes awash with dirty white money
Michelin starred hideaways private chefs and hot tubs
golden keys to an off shore magic circle where only
the very richest of the rich are on the list
And on the resisting night of Christmas Eve
I think of all the razzmatazz : angel frosted lighted trees
candy glitter tinsel dreams -corrupted voices preaching austerity
I see a homeless girl- eyelashes jewelled by snow
her entire universe huddled close
in the black garbage bag at her feet
Her hair dusted with icy rain
Silver strands glistening like diamonds
Then Hope somersaults towards her –
a goofy kinky haired clown
He uses the breath of a nightingale
to place a winning lotto ticket
in her hungry hand
And the stars are freewheeling the skies
with electric poetry
And fountains of love flood the streets.

What about Bobby ? (Bobby Sands Died on 5th May 1981 after 66 days on Hunger Strike he was aged 27)

Bobby sat in a dun and fly infested hole
With only a blood bitten thumbnail of hope
Sewing together a daily excrement calendar
Smuggling notes through his nose

Inspired a traffic of dissension
sprouting weeds of rebellion
Bobby never gave up
Sacrificed the beauty of youth
Fighting for the Maiden of Truth

Under a wailing blood clock
The guards
Played coffin tunes
A fist to the kidney!
A kick to the spine!
Tick tock Tick Tock!
Shit- can the needles of time
‘Bobby we love you!’
Wrapped his loneliness in the sanctum of the stars
His shaking bones whisper behind iron bars

The morning light screams
‘Wake Up!’
Hot spangles of sun eclipse
black moon eyes
Clouds dressed as mourners swirl across shriven skies
Bobby’s laughter lighting
the face of a new born Spring flower

Justice Nomad V Jurisprudence Gargoyle

Justice Nomad: Limps from Judge to Judge
with the nectar of truth on his tongue
Ankles shackled by the wealthy fingers
of oppression
In his two side pockets the folded bitterness
of a decade of injustice
The hallowed walls of the court
break down like play- ground stickle bricks
His half mad red- rimmed eyes
swear by all the gods this is his FINAL plea
lost his job -his -house three members of his family
lost his pride- SHAT it out with yesterday’s lukewarm oatmeal
The morning after the night before
he mortgaged his soul to pay
for another slick -mouthed greasy haired lawyer
who offered to WIN his case
so he took every last penny he had and Justice Nomad
borrowed more
fed it all to
the Jurisprudence Gargoyle:
A cabbage -faced money- sucking leech
with a thread – thin moustache
and pointy shoes he
carries a shiny patent leather brief
case has hour upon hour of premium rated
phone sex _____
and swigs cheap glasses of Prosecco diluted
with high income sales talk
Billing the Justice Nomad for gourmet lunches
counsel fees
and other miscellaneous expenses
Justice Nomad got a bloody nose
Spent seven years of his life listening to
Donald Duck judgments –
Quack Quack! They made no sense
The bearded stutter of depression dragged
him back!
Worse than a bank of maggots in the dust
Appeal after appeal he lost , so beaten
he left his balls in his mother’s purs
The sky split!
Red rain clouds
like punctured veins
burst open
and stormed
the drains –
still the Justice Gargoyle
powders his shonk for money
playing Jedi mind games
while the Justice Nomad
skips yet another meal
and lives on the borrowed cobwebs of
charity –
He was promised golden apples a
wide smiling victory
He got:
A crooked carnival of deceit
forced to sell a kidney
bled blue-black piss for five days
Made scatological poems on asphalt

Still the Justice Gargoyle came
Lifting a large stone to his head
stuffing his sick gaping mouth
with the ga-ga fantasy of
justice dreams .

Coco Cola Eyes (Mise-en-scène )

Cinema-curled hair
Snake hips melodising the night’s starry mouth
lizard platforms jive talking with leopard silk pumps
Moonflower shine-slap-rapping on white chiffon thighs
He drank bourbon with a shot of milk
had a Harvey Keitel lip swivel
Bull dog wrinkles –
liked African panthers and Swedish porn in that order
The hot shagging rhythm of boom bap highs
Quadraphonic-fever rush-infectious curves
A flick knife ride on a funk guitar
She drank a dirty martini flaunting an
open-bosom sparkle-green bikini
She had coco cola eyes
Hot black fizz that mesmerised
That same year Barings bank collapsed
after ‘rogue trader,’ Nick Leeson blew £ 1.4 billion playing
high -stakes speculative games on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
Riots broke out in London
after the death of 26 year old Wayne Douglas
And the shimmering horror of Timothy McVeigh ‘s truck bomb
was played out in real time
Oklahoma city April 19th 1995-the same day a zit popped kid
folded the four corners of a fifty dollar bill and fell into a dirty secret
He remembered watching her move like
TALKING CANDY
Wanted to touch lick taste feel
The same year the Unabomber Manifesto was published in The New York Times
Disjointed moments a portrait of chaos
His hotel had a Gideon bible MTV and cable sex flicks
Caught sight of a new world in those eyes
Want is sharper than the thorn of a rose
Tangled in a luckless mist
He approached her
Like a high wire tight rope walker
Cherry – blood lips
on the edge of a kiss
Vicious heart stomp
High voltage lust
Her voice cold as salamander skin
Venom notes of rejection
The same year 1995 –
when a spider ate a fly .

Saira Viola : Poet, fiction novelist, song lyricist and creator of sonic scatterscript. Applauded by booze bums, misfits, electric cool aid kids, old school hipsters, social pariahs, swanky pants literati and Hespi, a stray Siamese kitty. Viola’s work has appeared in lit journals like Literary Orphans, Push, Red Fez, Picaroon, Flatbush Review, Literary Heist Online at PRRUK, OJal Art Journal on bathroom walls in Vegas and in counter culture magazines, International Times and Gonzo Today. Benjamin Zephaniah has praised her ‘ twisted beautiful imagination’ and Heathcote Williams RIP her: ‘hypnotic explosive writing style.’ Twice nominated for Best Of The Net (2017) Pushcart Prize Nominee Rascal Magazine (2017) Poetry: Year of The Propaganda Corrupted Plebiscites Poetry Year Book 2018 (The New River Press) Viola’s debut poetry collection premiered at the New York Poetry Festival: Flowers of War (Underground Books) and her poem Flowers of War features on the Stop The War Coalition UK . Don’t Shoot The Messenger (Underground Books ) Mini Rebel Chapbook (Underground Books ) Fast Food and Gin on The Lawn Novel:Jukebox (Fahrenheit Press) Crack Apple and Pop (Fahrenheit Press). Follow on Tweetsville here…

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