October in the Edgware Earth
	After Jack Kerouac’s “October in the Railroad Earth”


There’s a big road in London called the Edgware Road, back of the Marble Arch station, where me and all my neighbours live in a building that falls apart called Dudley Court, with leaks, and creaks, and drills all year round, where people come to buy drugs, where Airbnb guests scream Mate, the lift’s not workin’! while the concierge mumbles Short-term lettings are illegal in these premises, but hands them keys anyway — the road is loud and proud, its rickshaws booming with sound, and motorcycles revving out into the night! — there’s foot traffic, and maybe trafficked feet — ‘merican tourists clickity-clacking their suitcases from the Hilton up the street to see Sabrina Carpenter sing in the Park, gazing at bars with shisha smelling like ice candy burning on the stove and at pawnshops with ol’ rimless spectacles and snus and flags o’ Palestine paled from rain and hopelessness while bootleg Labubus and cabbages next door blacken from exhaust and exhaustion…  Madman, madman — people say — coulda lived anywhere in ol’ Great Britain, but to me, this here is Great where people dance and pray, though soon there’ll come an end to our sadness and our gladness and though I know my neighbours will be kicked out before me (I can try to butter the right biscuits), we will all have to fall eventually and burn again through this October Earth…