The Embankment

The Embankment

A sultry autumn night on the Thames,
jazz drifting from the bridge,
mingling with the garish crowds on the Southbank.
A tuneful rendition of body and soul,
melodiously drifting upon the water,
feeding upon the hum of the hungry traffic,
zipping between the bars,
spilling their patrons onto the sidewalk,
between the sips and the cars,
a jocund fraternity of the night,
a fashioned modernity painted with apocryphal light.
Heads swim in the sensate din,
a tidal wash of inebriated pandemonium,
imbibing the last warm airs of the year,
violating each ear, awash in cocktails and beer.
The final melancholic confession of that brooding saxophone,
slips across the licking waves,
gently tonguing your lilting head
as it rests upon the needle,
a thread of sensibility,
cast across a world in an ageless eternity.
The Sphinx riddles the dawn,
the silence and the scorn of winters cool death,
born upon the sidewalks of this old town, forlorn,
within the fog of another cacophonous hang over.
Slinking in the back streets, lost,
half lit denizens drifting aimlessly through the mist.
Skulking on the corners, on the edges, the rim,
shuffling worn out shoes across white hot coals,
outcasts and refugees, torn naked, clothed in despair,
eyes turned downward, they wait for you there.
The idle tick of a sentient clock,
taps in time its cane upon the cobblestones,
Big Bens bones, Boom into the dark,
A cat screams, creaks and dreams,
beyond the shadow eyes of the cold and stark.
Swift wisdom comes upon the unsuspecting,
the nonchalant swagger of innocence,
easing between the crack in the light,
the ham bone in the pea soup of our night,
the gullible gorms of the river rats delight.
This breath, this moment, silence,
between the changing of the guard,
and Old Scotland Yard, I found you once again,
upon the Embankment of that ancient rivers gory flow,
screaming as a testament to every lovers woe.
You laughed as we fell upon your banks,
ever changing, exchanging your vows,
while all the world wondered, as you plundered,
the spoils from the sacrifice of all those sacred cows.
The lilting trill of the dawns chorus,
replaced with a big red bus,
like the blood running down the back of Boadica's race,
the tar and feathers of your fallen disgrace,
risen once more upon all of us.
Gold, that glints upon the water once more,
gold, and all the flotsam that has washed upon this shore.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012