Best Croydon Poems

Pensive in Croydon
colors blazing intensely
lazy day complete

afternoon furiously
fighting for extra moments...

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The tidyings of a town
here we are in Croydon
trying to make a stand
Seen so many charges
a 15% council tax rise,
fall from clumsy hands
Our Whitgift centre a shell of a complex!
The whole town has a forgotten ring
Do the dangly dance now
A town in remission
isn't too grand...

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hoardings  of shops on the isle of ridiculousness
the feral pigeons pontificate
the leaking roof of the civic theatre stays
you've seen better days
you've blundered into desperation
bankrupted twice
and now you're turning the middle
of town into millionaires row
ill afforded by the minions
even our local Market is shrinking
an ebb...

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They are closing the shops
the town planners
are leaving on the tram,
semi millionaires hoover
at the half a million flats
how did it get this way?
possibly i'm bothered!
ripping out the centre,
to make sure any indigenous,
person couldn't join the scheme,
when did you stop
being my town?...

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Croydons just a new build away
if it wasn't for the once East European office blocks fad
its now inviting human capital
to dwell in jolly new builds
and with the new Westfield proposed
most indigenous inhabitants will sell up.
They knocked down the Warehouse Theatre
to prove barbarians rule.
The Central library...

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In the memorizing firelight flicker
comes rebirth
as the valley of Crocus flowers
becomes a corporate castle of skyscrapers
the taller the better

The middle of Croydon
once of offices
has seen it possibilities light up
like a condensed can of milk
The ill afforded indigenous
are shied away from rent
replaced by a smart set...

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You're a Street Map that has to be believed.
George Street 1975 then a jewel in everybody's Crown, Mister K too.
Croydon had it all, the weekly Safeway shopping -
Grants , North End, Greyhound and L & H Cloake,
even a Manhattan skyline -
Shop girls  I was...

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When I was 12
our family arrived at Croydon.
Everything seemed grander
a real Municipal town
we had record and camera shops
and departmental stores
everything seemed geared for conspicuous expenditure

We seemed not to have beggars in the street
and the greenline buses took us to country lines
My secondary school seemed good
as...

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We used to have buttermilk
and Austrian white wine
from Safeways
and used to buy 2nd hand Prog from Beanos
The years have sped by
and I'm not recalling any standout shop now
Unless you include the durable Buddist centre
Toothless gaps in the town square
The Whitgift Centre is half empty
Samsung Mobile...

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You've aged well with Conviction
Guarding your yesteryears
of residential Presbyterian Thornton Heath in 58
and Kennards in the town centre
Bygone Croydon days
with Grants and Allders, crown jewels
and Beatles at the festive Fairfield Halls 63
and Young Conservatives 64 in Purley...

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Indisputably bankrupted deux times
boardings on stalled windows
Recession unproofed
bundles of betwichted people aloff
clumsily lost Waitrose
and still the Fairfield roof leaks
Queens gardens is no longer bespoke
its tenable for climbing children

We've still not lost the war
culture exists
and I'm eternally grateful
Poets Anonymous
and Poets hour at the library
provides the same...

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Maybe we should erect a love story to Croydon
Celebrate its Pound shops
and diminishing shopping spaces
Love a shank bone instead of a unmeritorious knife
and await the snow
hoping its gritted
in your Bankrupt Croydon
so wonderfully mismanaged...

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You bankrupted us thrice
and closed our Libraries and pools
You created a property portfolio
and played speculation
Now you leave chasms in the town centre
Croydon do we deserve Labour ?
You compulsively bought houses
and turned them into flats
not respecting green uniformity
just a by word for affordability

The Party machine spins...

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