We are the people of Kings Cross,

in brick shabby builds for the working class,

and those windows that never worked.

 

We are the survivors,

of gyratory politics

and car fumes

of latent politics.

 

Yesterday,

stood beside the five Pound hure,

the crack addicts

day in and day out.

 

We are the living of Kings Cross,

sons and daughters of further shores,

out of blood trenched wars

seeking refuge in faith.

 

We are the sons and daughters of the

working class, the under class,

to be disregarded.

too many still

wild ticket of no chance.

 

We are the people of Kings Cross,

who stuck it out,

not enough to relocate

to greener lands.

 

We are the residents of Kings Cross,

before a Kings Place

or a bird’s cage swing,

 

We lived here, when out of derelicts

came nightly sounds of acid house

We saw the rats that colonized

your fancy coffee bars.

 

Moment of reckoning,

us, who always stood here and bared it all,

the flying Scotsman ladies,

the Central Station club nights,

the too many off licence

and fry up infested streets

from Addis to Bengal

Welsh Centre to Old Cally.

 

There is a new dandy here,

round water fountains and

millionaire’s courts,

that erased in one sweep

the stench and filth of yesteryear,

the disgraced pushed behind

up North somewhere.

 

But we are still here,

a left out mass

too peripheral to see,

as cars still roar through our roads,

boy speeders, diesel cabs and Royal Mail vans alike,

 

The mayor’s promises of years

to calm those roads,

a laughing stock against their speed

and the new high rise builds.

 

We who live here,

showing tourists the way on maps.

 

For you we are peripheral,

best we don’t exist at all!

 

So you raise the rents and price us out,

here’s a Waitrose to an Iceland,

a three Pounds coffee shop,

to a local pub.

Improvement, better, gentrified!

 

 

The court, the post, the nurses home,

the new talent music place all gone.

 

But we are still Kings Cross!

From the Calthorpe down to Cally Road,

Grimaldi Park and Argyle Blocks

and Sandwich Street,

Pancras Gardens coroners

and Camley Park.

 

Kings Cross we are,

It is but you who has to prove

your worthiness of being here.

Not by your acquired right,

but by recognizing us,

as those who lived and worked,

campaigned, and fought,

through rough and bitter years

and sweeter days alike.

 

We are Kings Cross.