Cardboard City

Hands locked in darkness - a nocturnal greeting
We flutter like moths round the brazier's flame
Shrouded in shadow - our clandestine meeting
Here where past and present are one and the same.

No-one dies in Cardboard City
Faces only fade away
Eat your pride and take their pity
Fight to live another day.

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk bare upon these lonely streets like mine?
Does God watch us from that penthouse high above
His children down below who live on air and love?
Wrapped in old headlines beneath this shop awning
I shiver in silence and wait for the morning.

No-one cries in Cardboard City
That would be a waste of tears
Eat your pride and take their pity
Like you have so many years.

Youth of our nation - A lost generation
Like lepers we march to the chimes of Big Ben.
Exiled and rejected by powers elected
Our cries from the gutter don't reach number ten.
Give us this day our daily bread
Before the headlines read "bring out your dead."
Chip-wrapper flowers are blown onto this cardboard grave
My spray paint epitaph upon the wall it says...
"Here lies the bones of some poor homeless vagrant
He died as he lived, in the shit on the pavement."