by Nick Moss
3 a.m and the Craven Park shotters
are eatin wings
from the all night chicken shop
an blazin up while
someone plays Davido
on their phone speaker.
Everyone leanin back
on the Ladbrokes window,
broccoli stench like
damp tramped earth,
an someone with a lit pipe
crouched down
in the defib booth.
Unmarked cars
circlin like jackals
round once, then passin
again, again, again
and Tee rides past
on his pedal bike ,
matted locks
stained t shirt.
(It look like a movie but you know it is real)
Remember him before the rock
took his lungs,
before you could hear
death rattlin in his chest
with each dragged-up breath;
how he sang so sweet
one time at Hackney Show,
a pick-up band; would have
been a hotel showband
but for him and his
light, silver croon.
Another time,
a sound in Peckham,
half-empty room,
improvisin over
“To Be Poor Is a Crime”,
voice like a smacked out
Art Pepper solo;
driftin, sad and pure.
Tee, now, like all of us.
A crack-scorch glass pipe
ground under a boot;
splintered, broken
but fragments still shining
when they catch some light.
