Smoke And Mirrors

IV.

Four o'clock in Old Soho,

rapidly becoming a backwater of lost technology.

The ratcheting grate of charms being wound up

with clockwork silver keys

grinds out from every backstreet Watchmaker's,

Abortionist's, Philtre amp; Tobacconist's.

It's raining.

Bulletin board kids drive pimpmobiles in floppy hats,

modem panders

anoracked kid-kings of signal to noise;

and all their neon-lit stippled stable flirting and turning under the lights,

succubi and incubi with sell-by dates and Smart Card eyes,

all yours, if you've got your number,

know your expiry date, all that.

One of them winks at me

(flashes on, on-off, off-off-on),

noise swallows signal in fumbled fellatio.

(I cross two fingers,

a binary precaution against hex,

effective as superconductor or simple superstition.)

Two poltergeists share a take-away. Old Soho always makes me nervous.

Brewer Street. A hiss from an alley: Mephistopheles opens his brown coat,

flashes me the lining (databased old invocations,

Magians lay ghosts-with diagrams), curses, and begins:

Blight an enemy? Wither a harvest? Barren a consort? Debase an innocent? Ruin a party…? For you, sir? No, sir? Reconsider, I beg you. Just a little of your blood smudged on this printout and you can be the proud possessor of a new voice synthesizer, listen-

He stands a Zenith portable on a table he makes from a modest suitcase,

attracting a small audience in the process, plugs in the voicebox, types at the

c» prompt: GO

and it recites in voice exact and fine:

Orientis princeps Beelzebub, inferni irredentista menarche et demigorgon, propitiamus vows…

I hurry onward, hurry down the street

while paper ghosts, old printouts, dog my heels,

and hear him patter like a market man:

Not twenty not eighteen not fifteen Cost me twelve lady so help me Satan but to you? Because I like your pretty face because I want to raise your spirits.

Five. That's right.

Five.

Sold to the lady with the lovely eyes…