Miles from Broadway

Outside the café
sits the elderly gentleman
at the solitary table
that wobbles when you lean on it.
And he sits sipping coffee
with a thin cigarette
perched between his wrinkled finger-tips.

Across the road
a dog is tied to a lamp-post
outside the newsagents
that is also an off-licence,
owned by the brothers
whose religion prohibits alcohol,
but they drink it anyway,
and on this quiet afternoon
they stare out the open door
at the black Labrador,
panting outside
and sniffing at the scent
of next-door's takeaway,
or the outdoor butcher's stall.

And driving by are the
two blue-eyed boys,
with the red-headed girls,
in the car;
windows down
with music loud-
bass-heavy and beat-driven.
Off to the local cinema
to find a film
to get them in the mood
in the back-seats, where they fondle.
Within a week
they will swap partners-
simple teenagers,
looking for cocaine
or weed
or whatever they can get.
Maybe their parents' rum
bought on holiday
a decade ago,
untouched and dust-coated
at the back of the liqour cabinet.
It'll do
to get them drunk.
It'll do
for them to fuck to,
with music loud-
beat-heavy and bass-driven.

And outside walks alone
the actor,
or writer,
or musician,
who never made it.
His face beneath beard and scars;
his hands beneath fingerless gloves, tremble.
Feet blistered and hair itching;
skin dirty and clothes stiff.
Eyes bloodshot and jaw worn from grinding-
at least three teeth missing
many more black and yellow
guarding a breath so putrid.
Cold and desperate and hungry
and aching from the tired
he will never sleep away.
Ignored by the smoker with his coffee.
Hated by the shop-owner he tried to steal a loaf from.
Heckled by the teenagers, bored,
proving their bravado,
but loved by the dog
who shares his hunger-pains.
Walking the roads alone,
with pride long forgotten
he's now miles away from Broadway-
Miles from Broadway, without a home.