There is a higher power in the salt shaker,
and a divine truth found in the tea leaves
that circulate green water
and bring taste to my afternoon.
Customers suffice laden minds through new year's wind,
past recollections of old stores and vacant faces.
There are skeletons in their back pockets
and a common secret behind their eyes.

Each one of us desires time alone or time in company:
the dissatisfied, default state of the human condition.
I fell asleep to a world of smoke and ****,
then awoke to words and a sea of coffee chains,
gathering a philosophy from faces in the wood,
and having conversations with my own conjecture.
The black mass of last year is behind me.
It stalks my dreams but cannot sustain through daylight.

Happiness has fallen over me, clumsily,
so like a child learning how to walk.
I stumble out of the door, consulting each car window
reflection, to ensure that my crazy is not on show.
But this is the town that Crazy built.
We walk in patterns, performing domestic rituals
to occupy our mind, amongst societal demise.
It feels as if there is nothing left for us

as the drop-outs drink Special Brew by the gravestones,
and the rich turn tail-lights - tired pilgrim of London.
Only the lunatic fringe still look for contact
in a wireless world of sedentary care,
frequenting the bars that they used to love
before this small town fell to a blue-eyed catatonia.
The milk is settling in the eyes of the chronics;
the old folk coughing blood and ******* in their pants.

There is a higher power in my stride today
and a numinous edge to the girl in black stockings.
She lays out in my mind,
spreading her fingers in temporary joy.
I play the customer and pay for my tea,
for a material justification for why I left the house.
There is time here, to imagine my heroic escape.
How I will shake off all this Crazy,
how I will fall back into shape.