Old London Town now a city
chaotic and dying
Big Ben looking down
with a frown on his clock face
tears at 3 and 9 am
yet another week of stabbings
an 18-year-old English lad
lies dying on the ground
bleeding out from 5 wounds
stabbed randomly by a
crazy sikh carrying a knife

police are roughly cuffing
the innocent English lad
ignoring his dying pleas
he asks for an ambulance
and he’s telling them
he’s been stabbed
one cop says I don’t believe
you mate

they think he started a fight
because he is white
and the sikh guy who
has a darker skin hue
is innocent because of
his darker skin hue
(that’s how it is in not
so merry London now)

they take the sikh’s word
and the handcuffed young
brit bleeds out on the ground
and dies in front of the cops
the sikh gets a prison sentence
the British cops have yet
to be punished and they
might never be

and Big Ben’s chimes sound
like anguished cries for the
London he knows has fallen
and will never be the same
as it was in its saner days
when good British citizens
and concerned patriots
were not treated like pariahs

Bob Boyd