night in negative

there are some nights - apocalyptic, holocaust winter-cold summer nights full of wind and stabbing static rain as i'm walking towards the bus stop with my fingers frozen curved arthritic around a half dead can of beer - when i want to call you, just to hear you smile. i rarelyneveroften manage. instead, i walk along with the same songs in my ears i had ten years ago, with the same feelings in my veins, alcohol as love as blood, and i take my voice as yours, invent your words to answer mine. and even on the bus, slouched back against that rubber bending with every turn of phrase and road, i move my lips to speak words i wish i wrote and said as the wind battles harsh against the windows, and the air fights itself with the smell of cold and over-fried chicken every time the doors slide open and particles collide. and on those nights the journey spins as my mind fills with words unspoken phrases unmade reminding me not to drink and think at the same time ever never ever again. sometimes, sleepy drunk, i'll miss my stop, end up months away or years ago and when that happens, craving cigarettes to be desperate romantic hungry alive awake like blake (schwarzenbach not william), i'll walk the extra minutes through those months and years on cracked grey pavements and wish i was someone i admired so that this weathered smile would be worthwhile, if only for the few nervous heart seconds it exists. and then in that dying darting rain, exhausted tired drunk again with thoughts of work and the evils of a pretty face, i finish that stale crushed can, if i've not already dropped it, and try not to stumble home. and in my unmade double bed at last, beneath my cold open window sheets i heartbeat fast and close my eyes and feel like i'm watching my mother cry, holding her to me, trying to console what can never be consoled, saddened by the trembling tears i hoped i never had to see or wipe or talk away. and and and and all it takes is one short phone call, a few short words, some shaken woken memory brought to life through wires and buttons, the imagined structure of your mouth, curved, curling, caring, cutting, to make reality unreal, to feel what isn't felt, to dream what once came true. and on those nights i shake and shudder judder like the bus journey home and finally - 'about time!' say tired limbs - let decades turn to eyelashes and collapse alone into the darkness of an alcohol-lined mind until i wake to shake once more to breathe and rise again and try to remember how and where and why and who and when the fuck you ever weren't.