Drinks at the White Horse,
a round of alcohol
painting my throat red
and my words black;
I even spat some out
on the sidewalk,
watched them trickle
in a river
of nonsensical sentences
down the drain.

This pain - temporary
like the night,
bruises I invented
in a flurry of fury,
plum seahorse shapes
coil around the backs
of my legs,
join the dots,
one dollop next to another.

I’ll say I was attacked
by a motley clan of kids
who couldn’t even smoke
cigarettes correctly.
Oh these? Just a scuffle
from three Thursdays back,
I see the Giants lost again
what do you think about that?

Streets,
a swarm of phlegmy students
pouring out a hive of bars,
hacking into handkerchiefs
like broken motors.
Perry Street passes by
in a red-brick blur
and I think I stick
a few fingers up
when a cab shouts
a foreign word at me.

Some wizard
on Waverly Place
***** a girl’s face
so I snort, maybe giggle
a little at how lust
in Winter
is a myth to me.

Earlier in the cinema
I managed forty minutes
before sleep hit me,
no idea if the clichéd ending
came around
but the darkness was nice,
first hug in ages.
My MTV tells me nothing
I didn’t know before -
I live in my fridge
and the bin’s far too full.

The girl at twenty-seven’s
drawn the drapes,
doesn’t know I saw
her husband drop coffee
when the waitress
leant over to swipe clean
a table at Joe’s,
a lime-green bra
or perhaps it was blue,
it was thir- four-
fifteen hours ago?

She’s barely left college
and I’d bet my last four dollars
his son’s pushing
for Ivy League
(probably Cornell).

I fall under the arch,
groan as if I’ve received
a Christmas present
I already own,
feel a tinge of beer
fuzz on my tongue.
Strangers look at me
and know I’m not
no undergraduate guy.
A Labrador
skips past.

I salvage my phone
from the shipwreck
in my pocket,
dial her number,
let it ring
and can’t be bothered
with it all again.