Final track plays out.
There's just enough time
to knock back one more drink
and think to myself "well,
it was good
while it lasted".

It ended as it had to:
in spilled beer and cigarette ends,
with the doormen's silent encouragement
for us to drink up and be gone,
to be swallowed by the rainy dark outside
and become again,
someone else's problem.

You're just out of reach,
behind the door,
all impatient, dark-eyed intensity,
ready to dim the lights and pull the curtain
- it's over, people,
thanks for coming -
there'll be no encores, no comeback tours.
You weren't in this
for the standing ovation.

I push through people who are,
at best,
shallow forgeries of you,
who maybe see in you something not so dissimilar
to what I see,
but not the same.

A look demands to know if I'm unforgiven too.

Any opportunities missed before tonight,
will never be taken now.
Something that mattered for a time
is drawing to an end.
There's that that sense of something almost over,
fading,
slipping into memory.

And I watch your hands
as they slide albums into sleeves
for what will be the last time ever,
at least like this.
But it's late,
too late to talk about it now.
The clock's second-hand's winding onwards
and the imminent passing
stretches everything into bullet-time.
So I just pick up your case of CDs,
and ask you:
"Home?"

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