6 a.m. is not so much an hour of the day;
it's more a nightmarish breakfast of fried brain
on burnt tongue, washed down with a side potion
of acerbic drivel. That might explain why
I woke with a bear like a sore head. Make sense?
Probably not, but at that unwholesome hour
I'm rarely in the mood for dancing
with metaphors. I prefer to say it like it is:
it hurts like fuck. If you've ever slept with a bear
you'll know that's not a metaphor, but a fact of life.

By 8, having showered, pleasured
and taken a fast-track course in pharmacology,
I resembled a human in all but appearance.
This was ostensibly a source of embarrassment
for the transparently attractive girl
who tapped out a cryptographic message
on my door as though she'd identified
the peeling paint and broken lock as evidence
of a security system.

I opened the door.
It was a short conversation.
She apologised for my being disturbed.
I said it had always been that way.
She insisted she wasn't selling.
I told her I wasn't buying that.
She smiled a profanity.
I re-activated the security system
and the world was safe,
at least, from me.

For some time after, I wondered what it was
she wasn't selling. Maybe an opportunity to give
time or money to a good cause: the victims
of recession, oppression, unnatural disasters?
I was reminded of something
my father once said to me
on countless different occasions:

"I didn't get where I am today
without making sure
that someone else didn't."

Well, if charity begins at home, I guess
that explains why I don't give much away.

As ever, the morning had degenerated
into a temporal cadaver hosting platitudes
that fed on bad blood and spent flesh.
So, adapting the principle that time is money
I declared myself morally bankrupt,
and by £8.50 I was back in the real world
dreaming up an afterlife manifesto
filled with idle promises and empty threats.

04/17/2015

Posted on 04/17/2015
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