The Soho Gypsy Rose Seller

The Soho Gypsy Rose Seller
Follows those who love
She wanders through the West-end crowds
Who cling and push and shove
She offers them a white stem rose
From a woollen, finger-less glove
But what the gypsy doesn’t know
Is there ain’t no love in Soho, no
There ain’t no love in Soho

‘We are not a couple!’ the couples always say
‘I don’t love her, I’m her bloody brother,
and I’m also bloody gay!’
‘No, no, no, thank you very much, I do not love this woman
To me she’s just a bag of skin in which I deposit all my semen
Nothing, she means nothing, do you hear,
absolutely nothing to me
So you can stick your roses up your arse
for two pound fucking fifty!’

Coz what the gypsy girl doesn’t know
What she doesn’t see
Is that there ain’t no love in Soho-ho
No love in Sohee-hee

But still the Gypsy Rose Seller carried on
For she knew that love existed
Even though the neon lights flashed cock
and the eros signs were twisted
Deep down beneath the Ben Sherman shirts
there must’ve been hearts still beating
Beneath the vomiting stilettos and married couples
true love couldn’t be so fleeting, could it?
So she went into the Underground
To see if Love had burrowed down like a ferret in a warren
And that’s when a man bought her entire bucket of roses
with the contents of his sporran
(it was Scottish money but that’s still legal tender over here)
And he picked up all the pretty flowers
and he chucked them on the floor
And he did a little merry dance on them
while his mates all cheered and roared
Then he snatched back all his twenty quid
and called the Gypsy woman a whore
And he dedicated the desiccated flowery pulp
to all the girls he’d loved before
And his mates all whooped and jeered for more,
feigned broken hearts and swore
That this here man knew where Love lived
and had once knocked at her door
But alas, he was then formally turned away
and so turned rotten to the core
‘See, there ain’t no love, darling’ he sang,
‘there ain’t no love, least not in Soho, not anymore’.

So the Soho Gypsy Rose Seller
Went and scuttled home
To her bed-sit above a thrift shop
that sold small garden gnomes.
And sheput on her shawl
and she scampered outside
to the end of her small concrete garden
And she took out a key and opened a door to a barn,
no a shed, beg your pardon
And inside this shed was a field of roses,
individually wrapped and sheathed in plastic
And they went as far as the eye could see,
it was magical and fantastic
Acres and acres of shimmering flowers
all twinkling in the moonlight
All begging ‘pick me, pick me, pick me,
I want to be where Love might’
And she would reap them with tears in her eyes
in preparation for tomorrow
There must be Love,
there will be Love,
there will be Love in Soho.


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