"Changing World"

Every shop
Is 'poncified'
Not my manor
Or I would have cried.
Where's the pie & mash shop
Or the greasy spoon?
How London's changing 
Dancing the gentrified tune.
A fancy pizza
Sour dough base
Or your ciabatta bread
Totally ace.
Fancy burgers a tenner or more
Organic and free-range
Surely worth paying a score!
I'm pining for a good old Wimpy 
That's for sure...
When if you were still hungry
You could afford to buy more.
Hardly a bookies
Where you can have a bet
And right at the end of the road
A bar's named like a laundrette!
Where's your greengrocers
Normal shops and more
Exmouth Market's so posh
They've eradicated the poor.
My sort don't belong here
Just passing through
Feel like a freak show exhibit
In a Victorian zoo!
Bye bye working class posties
Factories galore
Tightly packed populations
Made up of us poor.
Been here for generations
Forced out at a price
But my oh my
That burger tastes nice.
Long gone are the days
When we could afford to rent
All forced out further
To Essex and Kent.
Social cleansing
Well on the way
Hardly any from the old days
Can afford to stay.
As time goes on
It's going to get worse
There's nothing I can do
Except get angry in verse.
'Fortunately' I'm now fifty
Heading for my twilight years
I'll just about cope
Despite my fears.
I'm not scared of dying
Just of getting old
Being forced out on the street
And dying of cold.
Is it too much to ask for
An affordable roof over my head
In those parts of London
Where I was born and bred?
The gentrifiers are CUNTS
I don't mean to be rude
All I want to be able to afford
Is a bed, football and food.
I may still live in South London
In that I take pride
But I don't feel it's my city
And part of me's died.

Dulwich Poet 13th May 2017

(Today I was at a poetry event in Clerkenwell, along Exmouth Market. The market was closed, but the street itself....I don't know the area, but I'm guessing it's changed a lot over the last couple of decades...and tragically this is happening all over our once great city.)