You have the right to know
that my heart is in this matter. So when I know you were here before, that you
left a wet footprint on the bathroom floor, a ghost of your presence, a shadow
to the wind, a whisper to your essence, the likes of which I can conjure up
without a second thought, but might be tinged with the smallest dose of pain
sometimes, remember my heart misty murmur is in this. We all have to strive,
and strain and seek what is good and where the silver lining that is the only
thing on God’s green earth worth shouting about, and if not then no one’s got a
chance. And everyone wants a chance…
…The moon, yes the moon. I haven’t howled at
it, but it outshines a mid-night metropolis. Streets sleep, pavements are empty
but the city has a pulse that cannot be stopped and a thirst which cannot be
quenched, no matter how many hipster jazz cats bop to the underground night
beats that no one can see but are always heard.
Lets be me, whoever you are, and entertain a
world of furies and wear Nike ironically in pretence but covertly think it the
thing to wear, and everyone else thinks the same and nods and passes narcotics
in your direction, as if it’s the cure, the remedy for times of insecurity and
despair – one of the two.
Call Lane reeks of the failed artistry of
European song, once shot in the chest, but he’ll ‘give you a sheet of his
unpublished music genius ‘cos you played Mardy Bum so tight considering the
time of night and the alcohol percentage of Red Stripe.’ He digs it. Man, he
digs it.
If only Cadillacs were from Yorkshire. We
could get one second hand, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows Cadillacs.
Real cheap. Real good nick. Real great Nike. Real good spanner in the works,
and we could bomb to the coast and get high on grey waves and white wine or try
to find the Pennines and make our mark. But the roads are too small,
incorrigibly acute and sheep and rain and old stonewalls ooze obtuse
Shakespearian anxieties, a kinda rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind
notion and the Rozzers wouldn’t be too keen.
If you ask me, I think we’re too middleclass
to revolt enough to see ourselves as we wish. This may not be the case. I hope
it isn’t. Hope being the main reason why I write. To be free of the fear. THE
FEAR. To be free is to
write, but in writing, I address what it is I cannot surpass (I think.) And I
am left nonethewiser much like when you find yourself on Call Lane. Although
how much like it it is I have no idea. The similarity lies in the searching, I
would suggest. The big fat gypsy nothing we wish to fill in – colouring in the
spaces between the lines that define us, like the train journeys that are the
gaps between our sense of life. And to find articulate brevity that matches
what it is in our minds we cannot verbalise of vocalise – to find and
capitalise on that is what those on Call Lane search for. Or so I like to
think… that’s why, certainly, I’ve found myself there a few times.
Mixing it with the revellers – pretending to
be on a level of loss, which I can relate to, but find weary, both at the same
time, at the same instant when handing over moola and looking down the sticky
neon bubblegum drum rum bar at my own reflection, and the mirrored image of
myself I find in others, those Sambuca fiends give me back a knowing look of
‘yeah I got a loan out for this shindig’ and I’m like ‘yeah I can’t relate as
much as you think I can.’ And the music swirls and gyrates, people swim through
it and come out the other side dry-wet and grinning helplessly, it heats the
room, and more time than you think is spent looking at the floor and your feet
and the sink in the toilets. Then you’re gone and you hit taxi tyres and fumble
wallets and shout at some cat that was meant to be sharing a lift to our neck
of the woods. But before you know it you’re shouting out orders for Styrofoam
boxes with extra mayo and go easy on the garlic and why would I want salad,
swearing for the lack of fizzy tin pop sweet drink, then reaching for the
payment in your pocket you’re nine pennies short of, and after incredulity
think that although worn out, home is close and the chirp bird dawn chorus
don’t get heard by many.
Stagger
past steaming green bins and you crash into dark kitchen space at first light
and smash silently up hollow stairs and look into space before closing out that
same caffeinated city spectacle scene that now twitches awake while you twitch
for sleep, a big fat gypsy nothing of sleep that your soul yearns for until
afternoon. But your liver moans, then it groans and turns inside out with self-satisfying
disgust. Throwing a window open for cold air to ice lungs and face, unconscious
gasps of invisible nature quench stripes of red unease, and you watch an obese
sunburnt blue belly hero sort in a panama hat toke a Cuban, while you
momentarily remember we’re out of matches, you get Spanish strings and woody
acoustic type vibes and sounds and the Samba pulse through thoughts best left
for a smoky room full of mahogany and whisky and moustaches singing snooker and
the tap’n’echo-click of billiard balls on verde velvet. But that’s a place you
haunt too often and discard it from cloudy mindset and lean and teeter from a
window, which once held the moon misty and the street-lamp-lit skeleton frame
of urban immortality, but now frames a pylon wire web spread to the horizon and
a dead-electric black Mercedes-Benz and a newsagents that charges to pay on
card. The moon the moon the murky orb hovers the city swells and shivers
morning’s unstoppable beckons. This is where we eat ourselves and in doing so
recognise our self-destructive hardwiring. But all you know you need is a roll
of toilet paper and a lined notebook for the degree you should probably start
working towards. But you justify coffee to the list to make it worth your while
and squeeze downstairs and into sunlight, vile and deviant and unforgiving like
a frowning adult who’s never had a hangover. You rock to and fro and think
you’re rocking aviators for the light-pain, but really you look like some sort
of televised talent show boy band member dropout with hair to match, and end up
crashing on the sofa because the guy on ITV turns out to be a thief and a
severe neurotic and you pity him more than you dislike him, and anyway Grand
Designs is on plus one in a quarter of an hours time… Dystopia eat your heart
out.
