It's been a while,
so off-the-cuff
with my sweet remarks
for the coffee rings
on the mantelpiece-
how it symbolises
entropy;
the debris of living entities,
the **** at the bottom of everything.

In reality I'm too lazy to clean,
too obsessed
with my lack of legacy
to notice the dust
that collects from old memories;
skin particles from parties long-gone,
all those fast friends
in the mirror,
sharing a tenner
across the kitchen floor.

The Drug took hold of me
from where love had left off,
throttling me
with its day-to-day panic
through my most tired routines,
the pillow-talk white-noise,
the anti-substance regime.

And now I'm tired of you,
you who I get high for,
you who brings me
to steady lows,
a subtle submission
only I can witness,
and only I can bleed out.
The Drug took hold of me
because you didn't;

because everyone let go
once I found a job,
once the money came in,
once my clothes weren't torn anymore.
They thought I was reborn.
A sober sunrise,
a cigarette at dawn,
slipping into the shower,
slipping into that
professional smile;
the bright whites
of the working day-
I have learned
to write and to cry
in the tears
of a crocodile.

A man becomes a calamity
without a woman,
or at least a love
that loves in return.
I have grown soft
in my bleak recovery,
waiting in the trash
of my poetic failures,
no longer looking
for those angry words,
no longer hoping to see
the city come to burn.