Total Recall - Post Eight

WINO’S BENCH

Dying in this melting pot of my little bit of bohemia.

The wino’s bench sits in all weathers inviting confessions all day.

They say, sixty-six languages are spoken in this neck of the woods.

By the same token the Jam-patios, unintelligible to all.

Except for to, some followers of the Ethiopian guru.

But like Dreadlocks once said, that that’s the way things should be after the fall.

Since the tower of Babel and hanging baskets of Babylon fell.

And we all fall, there is no escape and it is not will I? But, when?

And Jin Singh walks past with his brown-paper suitcase spilling out his smalls.

I knew it would rain, he complains as he hurries by the wino’s bench.

And they are in fine form today and out in force and speaking nonsense.

The bottles and cans empty and broken like the men who drank them dry.

And cold old Irish Pete hugs his shillelagh like there’s no tomorrow.

And slowly he downs the last drop from the miniature for the third time.

Across the street outside the corner shop even the currency talks.

They take Euros, dollars and cents, Zloty and Roubles for crack cocaine.

And young bodies change hands for ten pounds for ten minutes, dead or alive.

The Somalian’s have got their own café now and their own dealers.

They only speak Arabic to your face and perfect English at home.

Like everybody else, they want your money not your conversation.

Even the barber invites you to speak Hebrew; it’s all Greek to me.

Such and such a sort of double Dutch but those that speak Urdu still do!

And at the Delhi-deli they leave out the old veg for the wino’s.

But the alkies don’t eat unless they go to the soup kitchen at night.

Winter is coming fast this glorious Indian summer can’t last.

MSC210908

From my Moss Side Collection and originally posted here on my STG Bloggage in 2008.