London

A poem inspired by a market in Shoreditch, near where some of these pictures where taken.

The past is not black and white.
Not like telephone wires tiresomely static in the night against the moonlight
but like the rampant scribbled frantic fragments of an artist.

Embalmed with wiggled lines of red wine splayed thick there sits a carpet
twisted and used, it was picked down the market
a man who glanced around as he smoked clasping matches as he spoke
his prior pursuits mark him, had his life been a hardship?
Hands laced with distant traces of blisters from a fire and scratches
acquired from half the past time past-times,
are these harsh lines fractured in half by harsher lines eager to depart from it?
Or was it that his life had been as he see's that tattered piece of cloth
battered but enchanted?

A young boy glumly slumped behind the stall abruptly jumps, nearly falls
as the ragged man takes rag and opens fist to show bag
the darkened copper coins clink as they clearly hit its target.
The lad is surprised,
shock is alive on his face as he clocks the writhing veins and smokey scent.
This same place two years back arrived a man bent, weathered and shaped
with the intent to sell this plastered with grape and eaten,
weather beaten, defeated.. 'Excuse me' said the man 'take this carpet!'.
'I'm not a half wit' said the boy 'it's tarnished, marked with paint and varnish,
i couldn't sell this to a...' the man then departed.
Since that day the rug had stayed, stained, slung, decaying, fraying,
the corner just displayed under the finest garments,
weighed down under engraved coats it laid there,
waiting with patience it stayed there as if almost afraid there.

'Hey there sir, you are the man who gave me this!' said a now older boy.
Shoulders bolder, voice deeper and colder 'how come you return to reclaim it?'.
'Learn this' said the man 'it was my past, so I made it my future,
a present to my future self, now it is my present self'.
The boy started 'but why did you need to keep it from your floor?'
'I kept it from my clutches, i kept it from my throttle!
Unless i threw it out the door like me it would remain crutched up with the bottle!
And from that day I gave it up, the gaps between the soaked patches no longer enflamed my ways, the temptation to remain enslaved.'

The young lad had a new hat that he drew back at the sound of the tale.
'Put it back on boy that hat is too pale' said the man as he turned and inhaled,
slinging the rug over his back as he started to walk,
exhaled the smoke, started to sing which soon turned into a wail with a grin
as for the first time in two years he opened a bottle of gin.