Above the Grocer's Store

[douglas]

you used to make me run downstairs
to the grocer's store below your apartment
- after we'd made love -
to buy you cigarettes and chocolate

and i remember how beautifully ugly
the autumnal streets of London used to look
as i'd rush along the pavements
from your front door

litter and rusty leaves racing across the grey
the brown flat expanse of the park opposite
lined in the distance with the skeletal silhouettes
of old English oaks

and the bleak vapour trails from passing areoplanes
adorning the brittle pale blue sky
like the elegant patterns on your pretty
Alfred Meakin bone china

i'd always enter the store smiling and smelling of you
and Mr. Naidoo would always grin at me knowingly
placing the 20 Silk Cut cigarettes and Lindt chocolate
on the counter before i'd even said a word

then on the busy street again
the cold air catching in my throat as i'd
rush back to you ecstatically
bumping into strangers as i dodged through the fruit sellers

re-entering the apartment was always my favourite part
the perfumed smoke from the incense
the heat from the radiators
The Cure playing loudly on the cd player

and your outstretched tattooed arms
welcoming me back into the sultry masculinity
of their warm and secure
embrace

[dcmarti1]

Douglas, I know I do not have ESP but I know the search feature is not available now, but have I read this before? I remember the great imagery but not the exact title.....It all seems so familiar. Liked it then and still like it now.....