Poem: God Help Smith St

GOD HELP SMITH STREET
by Barry Dickins

The earth’s crust seems made of schoolchildren
As though grinning and joking will do for a building
Darting down alleys of Smith Street that seem anonymous
Luckily the Drunkards know
Each lane starts with Hieronymus
Bosch wasn’t it who painted Hell as Home
No: Breughel painted grostesqueries all alone

Christ among the Developers – grotesque enough
Wouldn’t you say? Such a beautiful face
Opposite Safeway – Jesus writing couplets yesterday
Rhymed lustrous with disastrous – you’d have to say
He had a way with words – almost uncanny
But developers aren’t letting him get away with
Too many –
Gorgeous unending sadness called slum by some
Heaven by others who live in her arms
Like a drum beating fatally for obscure jewellers

Scorched jewellers’ shops – incinerated dreams
Scorched hot bread archipelagos
Galleons of mangoes – histories of coconut carters
Chinese mythologies hieroglyphed into lettuce
By Everyman who writes of holy benefice

Every hippie who got a room going on Stanley Street
Devoted student of mesmeris at least he’d try
Listen man I knew that guy – he was the incredible
Stand in for Athol Guy – billionaires spitting in a skip
In which several ghoulish kids sleep –
Trying to get a kip – the sleep of the just isn’t it?
They were born in a doorway off Smith Street
Who’s to help us? Cry the covetous architect
Here they come right now and dressed for tennis

Anyone for History? Crumbling wedding cakes
Scared powered parapets because of course
Smith Street alphabets – who killed the Greek shoe shop?
Who vaporized certain 1886 spires? It’s a conspiracy
Of lies – who memorizes ruin? Who catalogues desolation?
Who bothers cataloguing the Sons of Smith Street who
Are the true unteachable heart of Anonymity –
Another baby is born outside of Jonathan the Butchers’
Is he gay? Has he pity? Does he give free lectures
All he ever says is God Almighty