Feeling fairly good tonight,
a note to Bukowski to drink again.*

I lost the hours of nine,
ten and one to the wine, bought
but days before in a rush out the door;
it was wet and I was late
to a meeting with myself in a basement
where windows wait upstairs, the casement
a see-through hole to everything outside,
to everything I want to be-

- it's a silent show when these days happen,
usually conjured up from empty pockets
and the need to be nowhere important,
safety curtains fall in front of shops:
they are not libraries for browsing
they are establishments for purchasing-in-

nine and ten came back to me,
one still escapes though, lost
to the palm of a waitress taking the money.

Crest of the wave shoulders
moulded into the final box;
Russian doll soldiers
have nothing on this once free-bus-pass holder.

Open the windows to the let the fresh death out,
past the PVC French doors, triple glazed
and no doubt worth their weight in gold.

Tidy up her lips with thread reinforced with care
and a careful hand tidied up in a well healed white gloved pair.

The next-to-the-cemetery funeral home sits not far from Wakefield