Loetics

I'm tired. i am so very tired. I am so very sick and tired of being so very tired and sick. I want out now. As I travel, cold steeled eyes stare straight through me, the million different people with their sight glazed and darkened, their pupils allowing no light past other than the dislove of a city trying to forget itself. I kill time alone, a knawing ache sliding through the middle of my back whilst a cup of coffee grows cold on the plastic table and the long metallic announcements echo unanswered. I hold a cigarette lit and watch the ash burn down as I fail to inhale. I light another from a sputtering match and observe the thin trail of wispy snake-like smoke, evaporating to annihilation. An old man takes slow, careful bites from his plate, holding his cutlery like grass on a cliff edge clutching. I stub out my cigarette, I get the check, I walk away and leave this slow grind of solitude to loneliness to play itself out minus my spectation. It begins to rain and I pause in a doorway for another smoke. A friend calls me and my cellphone flashes on and off in time with a neon sign illuminating services available. I fail to answer either and flick the half-smoked deathstick into a puddle. It lands with a hiss and I come to a decision. Later I loiter outside a theatre, hands cupping a cup of lukewarm tea as I queue. I get my ticket from a man with no smile and no coat, and as I hand over my crumpled twenty pound note, I note the muteness of this man, a worn picture so spent, gazing through glass pain, wearing his name badge like an epithet: a Mr Paul A. Bland. I take my seat and shed my coat, sat side by side the couples as the people watch the players make their believes on stage before us. Pain is like a loved one, until it's gone you never really miss it. This didn't really happen.