He could write only perhaps a page at a time so scarred was he of losing the brilliance that he had somehow found again. After a few minutes of writing he was haunted by introspection reading back on what he had just written he couldn't escape the notion his words had been penned by some greater man and if he were to continue, to add to it, he would only be lessening a beautiful portrait. The effect was that each page he wrote looked like a biography with each chapter recorded by a different writer giving his work the disjointed feeling of having many contributors all compiling their experiences to tell this one story. He had never bothered to understand Durkheim's theory of alienation, but he imagined it was something close to this – not recognising himself in every story he wrote, only knowing that it was somehow someone different each time and that they were all trapped somewhere deep inside him.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply sitting down.

Like a clown, walking down past the hotel room
his red-nosed cigarette alight.
The lobbyist winks, he recognises me.

Tap tap I'm leaving. Tap tap.

The train with swollen hearts departs this thawing furnace.
In the corner is the clown;
Comfied round his wearied eyes and weary pride.
Playing with her number like a child with a toy, wondering,

will the embers suffice?
To decoy and employ our tangled kisses and nibbles and bites through the nights.
Or get soaked up in depravity and a bottle of gin?
Excluded in the watered down reality of the phone.

The clown remains without a clue,
Are you thinking about me? I'm thinking about you