Sitting in front of some big building opposite Victoria Station I don’t know the name of
and can’t be bothered to turn around and look.

No sleep for thirty two hours, everything ponderous,
everything loaded with some sort of post alcoholic symbolism.

I roll and light a cigarette,
move down the steps as the afternoon sun shifts round
and the shadow creeping up behind me,
closing in,
pushing me ever closer to the pavement,
to the gutter.
That’s horseshit actually,
that’s going too far.
To the gutter?
No, not likely,
just a bad day in a hot mad city, no sleep to keep me rational.

Every woman today has borrowed your perfume.
I close my eyes and they’re all of them you.
Then I nod off into a little dream of you until my head jerks and I remember I’m sitting outside this building here.

Can’t fall asleep with all this luggage I’ve been dragging around for what feels like years,
though I only got off the train two hours ago.
Four more hours until my coach sets off.

Smoking another cigarette,
looking out through sun squinted eyes at jam packed bus stops and people dragging Samsonites with plastic wheels
scraping on the paving stones.

And here I am,
my road littered with good intentions,
moving down another step as the shadow touches the base of my backbone,
wishing for a cup of coffee
and some paracetamol.