Eyes opening to a scratchy, too-early, overcast morning,
body reeling off a long, loud litany of complaints
at being left too long
in one position it didn't like,
I leave him sleeping and
- in a T-shirt that still smells of him -
make my way downstairs,
not knowing if it's the floorboards I hear creaking
or just me.
I tell myself it's not late enough to count as 'today' yet
(still just an extension of last night)
and anyway, it's for medicinal purposes,
so I spark up the joint I'd left half-smoked
before we went to bed,
and head into the garden.
It's dull-skied, dismal, none too warm,
but the green festival smell of grass smoke
makes it seem like summer anyway.
Feeling vaguely decadent,
as I think of the millions getting up right now for work,
I realise what it was that woke me.
A brown envelope with my name on, too big to be a bill,
sits under the letterbox.
Paper tears revealing red on black,
glossy paper, slick as sin,
and unassuming in the bottom right-hand corner,
a name:
"Barry Edwards".
And I sit in the garden, and smoke and read,
and only notice the sun breaking through cloud,
when it shines blinding-white on pages
of drugs and drunkenness and deals with the Devil,
of wild nights and whiskey and all that jazz.
It's too late to consider going back to bed now,
but I go up anyway,
steal another few hours' sleep by his side,
and maybe later, I'll write a poem for him,
or maybe for you,
or maybe both.


Thanks for the book.

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