Old Bovver

You were on Brick Lane at the trendy end

and had some audacity to stand,

in ancient steel toed DM boots

with the red laces of the national front,

drawn up tight around matchstick legs

like the lips stretched across remaining

 teeth, which to me at least

also looked like matchsticks lined up

rickety in the stale partially discarded

Hubba Bubba of your gums.


I don’t know if the unexploded ordinance

of your violence was about to trigger,

or if the queer kids in mental hospital chic

or the Bangladeshi man, strayed from

the curry end of this blent street,

had caused you to stand here

in a reverie of shattered politics,

but you seemed harmless enough,

with your now naturally hairless head,

smoother than a beigal,

empty as a morning street.