Canto V

I’ve known this manor for nearly ten years,
saw bistros nudge out all the codger pubs
though at the postcode’s edge, you might still hear

the pattie shop soundtracks of Ska and Dub.
I may be local but I’ve never been
beyond another resident’s doorstep

I’ll smile hello to passing human beings
and nudge their baby’s cheeks or pat their mutts—
I’ll even share a crap joke before fleeing.

But normally I keep my cakehole shut,
I turn a death ear to the teens’ melee
and only lose my rag when people tut

because they never move out of the way
to make way for my jiggling fifteen stone
as, graceful as a hippo, I jog by—

flicking the Vs right back before I’m gone
to schlep my guts through laps of Brockwell Park
with eighties hardcore cracking my ear bones,

not fearing mugger’s shank or pitbull’s bark,
alone at last with my backwash of thought,
until somewhere within my psyche’s dark

my aggro-ometer resets to nought
so I can plod back through my neighbourhood.
I’m fighting fit for knocking tercets out

and for the future shock of fatherhood.

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