In the crime capital of the country

I've not spotted a robbing hoodie.

I' m all dressed up like Jimmy Cagney,

sitting on top of the world

in this brown pin-striped suit

and this black trilby hat

set at a world-weary angle;

I'm looking the part.

 

Vertiginously, I seek her out 

amongst assembled subjects;

all this space that spins between us

and the places that aren't here!

Emblematic gowns of beetle black,

blazoned epaulettes and edges;

at forty-five quid an afternoon hire,

I make uneducated guesses.

Antennae touch and radar redirects

incoherent intermingling;

silence slowly graduating

as the curtain's finally up. 

 

Here comes The Sheriff of Nottingham

preceding Michael Parkinson,

in yellow livery and tedium

drawling his way to the podium

to joke of football and cricket.

He shoulders a spade which is

purely symbolic, Parkinson quotes

an unheard of poet. We paid 

thirty quid each a ticket.

 

There's over-representation

of the Chinese population

in the Business and Management section.

I've done multi-cultural studies

and everyone ends up the same -

a giggle of called out names.

A posthumous award dispels monotony,

nobody else wears a hat like me.

I won't join the classless society.

 

Splashed colour proliferates

and caps are flung  to gunshots;

insignia mean an awful lot.

She'll be stabled in bright livery,

I didn't go to University.

I wore two-tone and danced to The Specials:

I'm still living in gangster time.