Listed Buildings

to those who understand...

She says they’ve opened up a new restaurant

up on one of the top floors

up one of those new supersized shiny skyscrapers that have recently risen up

in the square mile somewhere

with a perky waiter

with a smile as opaque and crooked as the Thames

each jagged-edged tooth a borough boundary

each curling lip an M25 pile-up

She says I’d like it.

If not the waiter

then, like, at least the plates

(which I imagine will be square

or, at least, oddly-shaped

and punctuated with a dot of food

or maybe a block

or a cube

and I remember the word soupcon makes me tingle)   

She says I’ll like the concoctions too

a cosmopolitan or Manhattan

shaken to match the skyline

while I’m elevated half a mile high up from the floor.

I say elevated because we don’t say lift these days

because we’ve shifted our language into globalisms

neologisms and semi-colloquialisms we used to get corrected for

like 24/7

and sometimes I need to sift through my lost vocabulary

and wonder where the words have gone

like a song eaten

up by the cassette player

chewed tape lost

to my parents’ attic

static from the TV screen I used to feel

until the crown of my head went numb.

Before they complained we’d all been dumbed-down

when we were really young

and not just pretending

there was a never-ending stream of words

we used to parade

on the upper deck of the 123 bus

banana-yellow and painted

blue with our pre-rehearsed curses

while Year 11s smoked out of scratched windows

and you and me chanted verses

from mixtapes you stole.

There are words that have long-graduated

from sink-Estate schools

queued in jobcentres

been left unemployed

and doled out

no doubt on some Essex barstool

where women dressed as schoolgirls order

vodka and lime.

I haven’t actually been to Romford

All those years I was just passing through

somewhere between Time and Envy

just me and my portion of chips

and a shoulder bag full of dirty clothes

waiting on the Friday-night busstop

with that top-of-your-voice karaoke belting

I believe that children are the future...

I felt that line

even with tinny headphones

a shivering puffa hood

and paranoia woven around my neck.

I felt that my future would come in time

and the space between us,

between our worlds,

would collapse.

And perhaps, while the helpline volunteer

with the chirpy voice of unreason

chipped in that everything would one day be ok

in that consoling way professionals always do

I saw myself

in the future

sporting a shiny new tower for a life

with a square mile for a job

and a wife with a smile that says home.

And perhaps, after I put down the phone

and held down a dot of a tear

and forced a laugh right back at you

for the prank that you never knew went wrong

it was then I learnt to embrace long silences

for absent words

and I learnt to curse

and I learnt to downgrade my dreams from a skyscraper

to a grave where I could bury them

along with all those redundant phrases

lost somewhere between the North Circular extension

and the tension we felt on the Central Line.

I want you to know

there is no darker destination

than Hainault via Newbury Park

on a low battery

and an angry stomach

no flattery more odious than an insincere smile

and no square mile that I haven’t trod down

in this opaque city

looking for you

and finding God.

I want you to know that things get better

and that Shards of glass posing as monuments

will never rise higher than your questioning soul

and that there is a skyscraper within you

as odd-shaped and crooked

as the city you roam

and that there is a banquet on the end of your tongue

a restaurant rising from deep within

which you can call home.

I want you to pull up a seat on a barstool

get comfortable in your skin

and invite your friends to feast.

I want you to elevate yourself from under the giant thumb

you’ve created out of East End churches

and Mockney and Jafaican

and I want you to find your own language.

Then, and only then,

will you manage to order something

out of that chirpy, gravelly voice

that you can drink

Then, and only then,

can you bring up a laugh

that bubbles through the buildings

listed in your lungs

and break down the walls of this city

destroy the young boundaries that divide us

the tall towers that hide our shadows 

and find me, whole.