Everything painful turns beautiful:
barfly light, the ashtrays webbed with resin,
The faces that remind you that you're empty,
the scenes that you must always rearrange,
The fact you tell me your dreams
but I never understand them, or believe that they're your own
And not stolen like black change from the words some hustler used
that kept you from boredom for a moment, laughing nervous.
There're no words for the longing that you feel
just the hopeful thought that someone else can feel it,
Someone you don't even know, except that they have suffered
and appear to live a life not quite as meaningless as your own.
If it darkened enough that you ceased to exist
what difference if you wasted your whole life?
The silver gleam of gin becomes an aura round your face,
a glow of God from broken seals, but at least He can be seen.
You get happy enough to insult me, with a smile
like it's got nothing whatsoever to do with you.
We punch with words, debate with fists, no referee could stop our blows,
no damage and no victory, just the whine of being a victim,
The only wine worth drinking on this stinky, mouse-brown rail,
the world reduced to olives you can stab
And full of people leaning, sleeping in their shells
that at least tonight will not be thrown away,
Laconic as the condemned, content now with the world inside,
not crying 'cos no one can understand them through their tears,
But kind to other prisoners, they share matches and white napkins
with the cigarettes and swizzle sticks in a line of sticky stools
And no one really notices the jukebox plays the blues,
and the mirrors always lie about your age.
Because we have no reason to, we congregate like packs of wolves
and stumble through the city like there's something we can't find
It's in disguise as the same drink under different beer-brand light,
with the same words and teeth of the inconceivable being
Who's followed us all night, looking for the missing word
that hadn't been misplaced in its apartment.
One almost enters someone's world when the dizziness begins,
the fervent urge to sleep with the unknown, to give up all
Left of yourself, when there's nothing left over to give,
you surrender to visions, turned to bile inside your brain.
