Billy knocked back a bitter
Looked me in the eye
‘It was all a lie’ he declared
‘What was?’ I tentatively inquired
‘MDMA, when were young, taking it at the clubs’
‘Aye, you’re not 19 forever’
‘You’d be there, buzzing off your tits
A shy, awkward geek chatting all night with one of the cool kids
Fuckboy 101
You’d talk about life, death, your fears, and hopes
The meaning of the universe
Then you part ways with a sweaty hug, like you’ve bonded
The barriers betwixt nerd and lad lay in ruins’
‘How beautiful a thing’
Billy gestured to the barkeep to refill his pint glass
‘Except’ he continued ‘you see the cunt on campus 2 days later
You wave and say ‘hi’ wearing a daft grin
And they storm right past you
Showing you up in front of your course mates
They pause to look your way with an expression of contempt
Which conveys they hold you in lower esteem
Than the shit on the bottom of their shoe’
‘The Great British night out’ I chime in sardonically
‘It was all a lie, all that MDMA’
‘Where’s the truth to be found?’
‘I don’t know’ Billy shook his head ‘bloody tap water maybe’
‘It’s a shame the Brits are like that, everyone needs music and dance
You see a tribe in a Bruce Parry doc
They know how to share something like that
Without the British style of casual cruelty tainting it
Why do our lot find it impossible to have something like that?’
‘The Vikings came, took all the pretty women
And killed the men brave enough to defend them
The skulking cowards left behind to reproduce are our ancestors
So we’re stuck in this mess’
Billy’s sixth bitter arrived
He downed it in two between drags on a fag
I was quite impressed
Tag: Memory
Night Thoughts
By Thomas Caterer
There is a chill in that spot
in that corner of the mind
Lost around the bend
Lost in time’s labyrinth
The dull thud of the cascading crush
of dead dreams’ post-mortem spasms
crash inside the cylindrical mind
cycling frenetically through images,
sounds, colours, smells, feelings
callously oscillating in time’s velodrome
It’s a feeling of the uncanny
that feeling of the soul leaving the body
You try to shove it back in but can’t
Try to convince yourself you don’t mind if you die
The night thoughts are inescapable
Every memory played back in such a sharp, clear hue
it’s painful to see all the hurt and lost opportunities
Every memory plays back crystal clear, more real than the real,
more alive than the living present
The zombies in your decaying head
have grown too big for their black dress shoes
they’re keeping you up again
with their morbid sense of humour
and devilish sense of timing
Entropy’s smiling like the grinning skull
of Zen fables, cheerful in its evergreen peace
its humour’s left me in stitches
reeling from the laughter, clutching the sides
Lost in time’s labyrinth
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