London By Night Poem by Paul Walker

I'd been off coffee for two years,
Then I sank some Turkish in Soho.
It hit me like a depth-charge,
I couldn't sit still.

So I slipped anchor and drifted
the streets of New Troy,
swooning at the girls wailing
in their crooked Greek.

I docked at Trocadero
and hit the punch bag machine.
Smashed two hundred crosses into it;
straight knock-outs, both hands, each time.

A guy had washed up there drunk,
A vicious slash across his face,
red as a Turner sunset.

Like a dead ship in a storm he
Pitched and rolled, until
the bouncers threw him overboard
for bleeding on the slots.

Snuffing out my stern light,
I followed in his wake,
searching for rum and cigarettes.