The Halogen Daubed Diner

He pulled out the Evening Standard,

To read of celebrities being slandered;

Their sadly stitched lives

Now embossed in paper archives.

His copy dated from three weeks ago

Just simply does show,

That he understands the night will be slow.

Earlier, when he boarded the bus,

Drenched in a rotting sweet odour

And did not pay as though a simple freeloader,

Then sniffed a half-eaten spotted baguette

Under threat

From salmonella,

Washed down by a warm can of Stella,

It became clear where be belonged –

In a society where he has most evidently been wronged.

Stashed into his rolling hand cart,

Was a plethora of milk-based relics.

Raspberry and banana milkshakes

Lay squashed against crumbling cakes –

Picked from a bin

Under the grim

Light of Soho’s sex dens,

Glamorised by those looking through the crystallized lens.

Unable to articulate his inability to pay

And turfed out as though a stray,

He wandered down depraved dead ends,

Until he found the halogen daubed diner,

Where he was met by a youth decorated in eye liner.

He ordered three portions of grease-grasped fries,

And sat amongst a mournful mosaic of night-crawling lives.

Yellow hues of a false façade

Deepened the internal shades of him, ill-starred.

A welcome internal retreat to stay there,

Allowed him to be unconscious of the bleak and bare.

His Coca-Cola infused with rum,

Crafted a creatively crazed breadcrumb.

The wind at the window then danced

To the depths of his freelanced

Solitude.

The chewing of 0.99p priced food

Strived to exclude

Noises nefarious in nature,

Written upon mental health legislature.

He is shaken awake

Before the brutality of daybreak

When the staff go home.

So once again he wanders the streets of London…

ALONE.