The Last Button on Wood Street

Bianka danced all night with Igor

left him in a spree

A baby in a rucksack

his wallet in her teeth

 

She sold her son in Northampton

because Igor’s credit cards turned to dust

For three thousand quid, then Valium

She’s addicted to laxative lust

 

Misses her solder boy sometimes

He is never going to call

What the fuck did she expect from him

when she fleeced him down the hall?

 

His eyes were as black as jet that day

His tears as real as brine

He was nothing but a hard luck story

another sucker on her vine

 

She sews multicolored buttons now

Orange, blue and white

Buttons are her pennies

and pennies are her life

 

Washes her clothes with Palmolive

scuffs her boots with a felt tip pen

Christmas cracker sapphires from Krakow

face made up like a hen

 

She’s out tonight in Primark

Revlon, Red Bull, a pledge

It’s the scraping hour, the loss of power

the thin end of the wedge.

 

Seething in the Plough in Wood Street

She’ll suck the whole world off and pray

kneel on peanuts, bugs and betting slips

that furnish this linoleum fray.

 

There’s a coin resting against the skirting board

drops her handbag close for distraction

She picks it up with a knuckle grip

clicks sprightly out to the action.

 

Outside the wind cries merry

There is a dog with a fox in its jaw

a piss and shit telephone box.

a dialing tone, a rusty whore.

 

‘Igor. Igor?’