London Sweats

A fan-cooled idle chauffeur
slumps
in his employer’s slick black
double-parked Mercedes

with its engine left running
for working comfort
as it stokes London’s
smoke-free zone

Kensington High Street
puddles
with our fat drops of sweat

See my old man’s back of death-damp –
patches of sweated whisky and beer?

They push me to seek
short-lived shelter
alongside a hundred others
of every nation
in air-conditioned shops
with wide open doors

We all become refugees
with changes in weather

Smog

I enter London
where nature is hated

here potted and placed
left to wilt disgracefully

This skyline is fugged
and bears no majesty

its stone spires smogged
by the smoke-glass travesties

At London Bridge
the train’s lathed wheels
complain on curves
in engineered squeals

Into Charing Cross

from the South Bank

above the dull Thames
and empty cruise boats

I leave the station
to find my black cab

that fuming transport
with it’s poisonous fag