In her mutinous retreat

Perfected unimpressed
Her skin is white heat

With apple fresh perfume

She's in mutinous retreat.

He doesn't get the chicks

And always looks like shit

But his fingers are like bullets

In arpeggios and licks.

Joy it fell like rain

On the St. Martin's steps

And the camera like a gun

Caught the traffic and the stress.

Now the slabs echo in their glamour

With halogen silhouettes

and the river's like a cinema

As the floodlights pirouette.

Now the wind it carries laughter.

The sting, the spice of tears.

A resonant nostalgia

Of when hours felt like years.

Each rhythm builds up harder

Each pierces and each rusts,

The furious tuneless player

Busking for love's trust. 

And the sick are painted lovely

The lovely lose their bloom,

While the poet's headless poetry

Is the panic of the doomed. 

He plays on despite it

He plays as if at war

She is out there in the onslaught

Cursing as before.  

And he still can't get the chicks

And he still feels incomplete. 

While she is sicker than the sick

In her mutinous retreat.