Everything is caught up, pushing, scrambled.
I'm dragged around - drinks, smokes, food, pussy, coffee. Always coffee.I order the same thing I order everyday from the same cute barista.
I feel cocksure, unstoppable, drunken - or greasy, fat, leprous, diseased.
There's a cloud blown across my mind, my calm. No clarity, it's all shouting, noise and clamour, or whispers that wake me at night, pulling out my muscles like old rope and making my back grind and squeal like icebergs colliding.
I'm waiting for a huge crack and half of me to slide off into the sea.
I'm waiting for my coffee.
I'm trying to sneak a futile glance at Sophie's rack while she makes it.
Is it being back home?
I want to run again, lost in the winds.
Laughing down alleyways - the sounds falling out of me and cracking against stones and shuttered windows, yellow streetlights pooling in the dirty runoff of 2am.
I want to drink rum and spit spanish and blow smoke in some tiny apartment. Taste violet firewater, sweet on her tongue - pushing me against the kitchen bench, her hands fumbling with my belt buckle.
To hoist my ragged voice under unfamiliar stars on an unknown beach, to hurl songs into the waves, knowing I only have tonight here before I keep moving, and that I'll never be back.
I want to breathe hashish and henna. To dance through snarling traffic, to fling money at snakes.
To hear arabic curl it's way through the air like burning paper, and the watch the sun hang in the air like a ball of orange cream.
She calls my name and smiles, hands me my coffee, says I look tired today. I walk the two blocks to the office with my eyes closed.
Steve
[email protected]
Paris, FR