THE NIGHT ECONOMY

3 a.m. The striplight winks
a saucy eye at the chef turning hot dogs
on the hot plate. He shuffles onions
with a spatula. It's just me
and two other guys drifted in
from drinking. A television in the corner tells
in hushed voices, gunfights overseas.
The world never sleeps. Coffee. Teeth
filled with grease and ketchup,
bread and onions spilling down his chin.
He is three sheets. From here streets
take a taxi over the river
Flights are rising out of the water 
coming down.
A lump of mucky sugar plops. A barge horn
blows the door ajar. A bell rings.
The lads are getting bolshy with each other.
I fix my face
in a teaspoon the wrong way round.
Nothing doing. The lads leave off.
It's just me and the chef. He is frying eggs.

INTEMPERANCE AND BUSINESS TROUBLE

In The City, sunlight turns the air to melted ice-cream
sending city bankers to the ale house for their lunch
to souse the fires with Staropramen. Thermometers pop
at the sound of the trading bell and seeping buboes 
weep in the underarms of short sleeved linen shirts.

This one, three sheets gone, makes a gamble he can drink
the afternoon dry. The afternoon responds with rain.

TRUE STORY

My friend works with alcoholics

and the alcoholics

calculate their drinking in bottles.

My father tells me I drink too much.

I opened a bottle of wine,

in my suburban estate,

for a Scandinavian family from the city.

My father drank every night of the week.

Whiskey. Rum and Coke. A Daiquiri.

My father never told me I drink too much.

A bottle of Lightning. Bells.

                                                                                       

WEEKEND

These are just blokes drinking on a Friday afternoon

after getting off work early after working like pigs

at something they’re pig sick of. This is where they let

rockets off to the moon, where the moon glows

in fruit machine flashes and flashes of tempers burst

like fireworks bursting, obliterating the stars.

The stars are all over the pavement. The pavement

is strewn with celestial beings and extra-terrestrials.

Angels and extra-terrestrials are singing, singing

alleluias from every street corner. A busker is singing

in excelcis deo on every street corner in town.

The shout goes up and is hoisted aloft and carried

through town like a varsity rugby captain 

hoisted atop his teammate’s shoulders and shouted

round bars like a saucy joke. Their shoulders are round

where they’re worn like a threadworn blazer or jeans

in the knees and crotch. They’ve been on their knees

all week and year, a decade of prayer. Praying the work

keeps on coming after the weekend. Until then their crotch

itches at denim and nylon skirts. Stiff nylon electricity.

DRINK

I fell in love with you when, talking,
your lips lingered by the tip 
of my nose and I felt your breath breeze
across my nostrils, and smelt liquor
droplets exciting the hairs inside.
It was scotch and ale, warm and rising
like the first red flushes of love.
I was kind of embarassed, in crisis,
could have kissed you then to taste
the booze that pooled inside your drunken
mouth, licked you dry, supped your eyes
that caught mine staring, undecided,
second guessing if you smelled it too,
intoxicated. You went on talking,
leaning back in your chair, spittle flying,
left me woozy, slurring, hammered, words.

FRIDAY NIGHTS IN A&E

Breaking into violence,
everyone expects themselves to be
x-rayed at the local infirmary.

Mother's stalk the corridors,
afraid their loved ones won't survive,
reading leaflets on birth control and
sexually transmitted diseases. Sobriety
heals most wounds
as children hide bruises from parents
like shadows cast by a tree
lost in snow.