The Laureate of the Streets

A fragrant vagrant traversed the pavement with trepidation, as if walking a dusty tightrope. She was well known amongst anyone who was a no one. Famed among the faceless but spat at by politicians and graceless graces.

With each foot meticulously planted in front of the other, channelling the precision of The Blind Artist. She worked the curb methodically, never once looking down, yet always in a perfect line.

Clinking clunks of heel, toe, heel, toe, echoed down the cobbled rotary belt pulling people to their assigned cog. The machine had long since malfunctioned and spilled jargon all over the beat; a smog filtering reality. The sound of her was a stranger’s alarm clock every single morning.

The street’s a damned circus. The crawling catwalk of a freak show; bearded ladies with cleavage heaved up to the high heavens, two faced wonders glued to screens, human skeletons skipping with knobbly knees, lion-faced men fluent in foreign tongues, children walking on all fours, backwards, after a good dousing of rainbow herbicides. The colourful spectrum of humanity smeared all over a blurry canvas, like walking through a heavy crowd; not as pretty as it seems but much more beautiful than anything could ever be.

Then, finally, those hard feet, which were free to wonder, stopped. In the same place they always did. Dead on the unmarked spot. Just opposite a quaint little café hung with a big, red sign. Inside were a dozen mismatched, wooden chairs of every size, beside tables plopped with candles, stuck in old wine bottles; ambiance for the nose and eyes. A handful more spilt onto the street. Those were the front row seats.

The splash risk zone, cordoned off by a thick crimson rope. It’s funny, the protection pulled by a low hanging rope; the separation of the celebrated and voyeuristic congregation, the segregation of colour and amoral evangelism. A pre-coffee Apartheid; those who can pay and those who beg to stay alive.

It could have been any street in the world. But it was that one, the one with a constant stream. Not the best by any means. There was an air of being slapped in the face about the place. If one were so bold as to open their eyes and really look. But most never do; too tangled in The Web’s toxic spill.

Our aromatic ex-aristocrat; the poet. Would stand sexless, her face cloaked in shade, spitting rhymes at passersby. Few laughed, few cried- most walked straight on by.

Until one day, a surprise donation was thrust into her bare, cracked hands- a small, black leather notebook, rather than half a pound thrown in a hat, by her feet on the sandy concrete.

Her eyes widened with surprise. She hadn’t held a book since jesus was a child. She carried only the clothes on her back, anything else would have trailed her back onto the beaten track. Her fingers clenched as if holding a pen. She couldn’t tell where her flesh on the page ended or where it began. Intertwined, she felt alive for the first time in a very long time.

The stranger held the notebook in both of their hands for a moment, squeezed the laureate of the streets with shaking, sweet sincerity, and said,

‘Your words are beautiful but you shove them down peoples throats. Write them all down here, in this little, black leather notebook and finally see the effects your words can have, once they take root.’

At first the poet reacted in defensive indignity and threw the ‘Damned! Blasted thing!’ at her unholy feet and cried, ‘But my voice is the only thing you can’t take from me!’

‘My friend!’ The stranger shrieked, ‘Can’t you see it’s your voice I wish to preserve for all eternity!’ The poet recoiled. No one had called her a friend since all of hers had died. She began to cry. The stranger stepped aside. The poet panicked, she thought they were running to hide like everyone else who had pushed her aside.

Suddenly words clawed from the poet’s throat before she could stifle them with a choke. ‘But I don’t have a pen! Don’t dangle this in front of me, what indignant cruelty!’

‘Ah!’ The stranger sighed, and pulled out a shiny white Montblanc, as if from their backside. The sun hit it like a beacon of hope. An unnatural sound pounced from the poets throat. It was the exact same model she was gifted as a child. Even a singular glance made her feel younger inside.

‘I-I can’t take this.’ She stammered, trying to shout but barely a squeak would come out. ‘I- I know what that is. A-And it’s white… I’ll get dirt on it when I write. A-And some bastard will take it from me at night!’

‘You must take it! I won’t take it back. If you try, I’ll throw it in the gutter for the actual street rats.’ The stranger nodded their head to the left of the poets feet, to the vermin scurrying like a little rat fleet. The stranger then nodded their head to the right, to the gang that tortured the poet morning, noon and night. The poet began to uncontrollably laugh.

By the time she had stopped the stranger had taken off.

The pen had been slipped into her fingers, which were still clenched as if she were already writing. She thought to herself, Don’t they know how much smack those bastards could buy with this thing?! Her eyes darted nervously to the right and she knew immediately that she would protect it with her life.

The poet fell like an apple on a curious head, the gravity of what had just happened filled her with inspiration and dread. She now had what she had yearned for all these years- a purpose and the means to fulfil her dreams. These two objects to call her own bestowed more sanctuary than any home.

She picked up and opened the little black book. The black lines on the page reminded her of a cage. She was immediately filled with a confusing rage. Assaulted by the looming pressure of a blank white page.

She raised her gaze. It landed upon a business woman, sitting on one of the mismatched, wooden seats, outside the little café, on the other side of the street. Inside the red taped boarders, where the poet could never be. Although sometimes the kind owner gave her stale sandwiches to eat.

The bones of the poet groaned as she looked at the pillow cushioning below the business woman’s designer clothes. The poet was jealous of that woman’s tailbone. Fuck the designer clothes. All that money spent to frown into her cappuccino?

The business woman sat outside that little café every single day, with all her labels on display. She never once looked up from the dizzying array of that device she believed was paving her way.

Sunlight bounced off her scarlet soles, as if bleeding onto the dirt. The poet wondered, How many little Asian fingers are those shoes worth? She opened up that little, black book and immediately scrawled,

We exchange money but pay with strangers limbs

If we keep our eyes in our pockets does that make us innocent?

The poet slapped shut the notebook. She continued to look. People watching, she told herself whilst imagining that random woman had never read a singular book. She assumed she knew everything there was to know, with front row seats to this one-woman show.

As the sun rose for the day, it dawned on the poet that it works both ways. She knew for a fact that woman had cast judgement upon her the very same way. Shite tinted glasses, with cracked panes from rash assumptive glances. The woman thought the poet an addict. The poet thought the woman vapid. A postmodern classic.

The poet felt a pang of remorse for her internal discourse. Her, an outcast of society yet still contributing to the never ending cycle of misogyny. She opened up that little black book and scribbled,

I don’t know you and you don’t know me

But i’ve judged you and you’ve judged me.

What fuckery,

I am sorry.

On the next blank page. She ripped it out, away from the spine. A shiver crawled up her own as she folded the paper into crisp, thin lines. Into a paper airplane, to fly. She thought, Planes cross borders bare feet could never defy.

She stood, suddenly feeling light and fired the paper airplane at the stranger, with all of her might. The wind caught it funny, it nearly took out that poor woman’s eye. A danger of firing planes into foreign sky.

The business woman batted the plane away from her face, she braced for the bomb she never knew she would embrace. She opened it like a candy wrapper, already waiting to discard it after. But then she seen what was scrawled inside and immediately felt a little raw, but alive.

She nodded her head at the laureate of the streets, and mouthed back, I’m sorry. With sincere simplicity.

The poet was awestruck by the compassion she had been shown that day, by strange familiar faces she believed had long turned the other way. She decided then and there to use her new found property, to fly her messages into uncharted territory.

The poet wondered if the woman even knew that she was unhappy. She had noticed the way the woman examined the pastry display, licking her painted lips yet denying herself every single day.

The poet jangled the change in her hat and beckoned over the café owner. She asked for the biggest slice of cake to be sent to the beautiful, rich, loner. The satisfaction would be more filling than than any dinner.

When the cake arrived, the business woman tried to cast it aside. So the poet wrote,

Sadness confines you like the captured wild.

Have your cake and eat it too.

One must feed their inner child or they’ll rot inside.

Down on the next page. Ripped it out and fired it into the woman’s personal space. You best believe after reading it, she decimated that cake. By the time she was finished, mascara had ran all down her face. Disgraced by the charity she never gave.

The poet ran away. She was not to be seen for the rest of the day, having retreated to the sanctity of her preferred stairway, to hide from the emotional display and to gaze upon her precious treasures; so valued, money could never repay.

The very next day, her feet returned to the street. When she stopped shuffling along the concrete, she noticed the business woman sitting waiting on her, in her usual seat. She smiled gingerly at the poet from across the beat. The poet, suddenly embarrassed by her courageous feat, tore out that first page of her little book, folded it into a paper airplane and threw it like an explosive. The poet could barely look.

We exchange money but pay with strangers limbs

If we keep our eyes in our pockets does that make us innocent?

She knew this one would sting, so the woman’s reaction could have been anything. But to the poets surprise she was intently listening. She looked down, embarrassed by the unknown death toll of her clothes. She knew that outfit alone could buy the poet a home.

There were exactly 365 pages in that little black book. The poet flew a poem a day the business woman’s way. One year to the day the woman had changed her ways. Irrevocably transformed by one poem a day.

On the final day, the poet looked at the woman sadly and said ‘I have nothing left to give you.’ The woman smiled and replied, ‘You’ve given me everything. My eyes are open wide.’

And then slipped £20,000 into the empty black book.