Old Kent Road paved our golden daze

We drove along deserted
pothole ridden streets
listening to Japanese jazz
mixed with lo-fi techno beats
on a mission to find a dingy bar
serving cheap whisky
with a dance floor for our fidgety feet
  or a crowded beer house
decorated with TV screens to steady our eyes
& glue our backsides into seats.

Backstreet meetings with sleepless
slinger deliverymen in tandem
with the tintinnabulation
of their burner phones
  who dropped checkers packet treasures
in cigarette box secret hiding spots
melted the days and nights into blurs.

We wasted that summer on Old Kent Road
with prodigal puerility.

Our bloodshot eyes
rolled into test match mazes
stumped out with squinting gazes
falling on ghetto art
plastered & scattered in blindingly bright
white light galleries
  where we stood staring at shiny tin
and aluminum oppression pieces
losing our taste along the way.

Those amusement parks
sold extended stays
turning into a dark alleyway of delays
sliding off road
& crashing into ditches of depression episodes.

Seeking hiding places
to numb our inside and outside faces
behind dusty corners
in a forsaken synagogue 
    -  once the darling of that sweet nothing
wheat milling town
cementing our frowns to statues bound to fall.

I would sooner return with pearls
plucked from the seabed of Mariana's trench
than find solace in pixel painted smiles
& messy handwritten scraps of far out chi-chi poetry.
  No memory
or any bit of twenty-first century technology
chipped within a handheld device
could recreate those golden days
on Old Kent Road
& nothing I might write would ever suffice.

Violent delights sunk into silent nights
falling from galactic heights into eternal hiraeth
& bonfire turned to ash in an urn cracked by frostbite.

Fifteen minute video calls
    granted by a white coat high and mighty
jolted me dizzy across the hundreds of miles
along telephone wires
  zapping me from cellular tower masts
where basking birds
sat slumming and sunning
fluttering as high as I.

Weeks ran overtime
turning into months
formed by one stretched-out whirlwind day
under the grey sky
covering my euthanized world.

Bittersweet poison steeps behind my eyes
creeping into my sleep
& gagging the voice of reason.

Say sayonara to tomorrow
and meet me on Old Kent Road in the next life
for a second bite at paradise.