the bar is all black paint bricked up windows low ceilings/visiting a friend working a long bar shift/i hunch on a choice bar stool/watch myself sink iced cider in the dirty mirror/ok so its starts well enough/place fills up with students for happy hour and the big match/drinking out cheap pitchers and smoke superkings from ten packs out the machine by the toilets/square cellophane torn on the table in ale puddles/my friend well she can only slip me a freebie or two/tequila cos no one ever orders it/gold jose/neat and warm/there are goals on the new plasma and cheers and groans/i go to piss and coming back i find a huge guy on my stool/dreads to his back pockets bulging with whatever/think oh well but he gets up/saving it for you dude he rumbles/well my friend got some pull here/i nod/take up the drinks/cold glass and a drinking crowd - i am a cipher/the crowd changes/students drain out after shyly scoring tiny weed bags from yardies/saying man too much/way too much/man/well the yardies they filled up one dark side of the place like ghosts/bunkered in booths in army fatigues/low growls/mean laughter bounces harsh off the cement walls/i sink the drinks/cold glass to my kissing lips/mumble to strangers/visiting her there i say/you know her? yeah - i am a marked cipher/my friend well shes busy shes blonde shes popular shes respected/i go and throw up deliberately/splashing booze out on the ceramic void/making room/well time marches invisible/i decide to eat nuts/well i end up on a table of smoking women/heels and leather/wide poured skin/red nails/big handbags on laps/their phones ring/they wobble out the door/they disappear/theyre back in half an hour or so/not long i'm not sure but not long/they return with fistfuls of notes/buy rounds for the table/well i'm in on a few rounds/some jose shots i dump in the cider/and when i go throw up again my chair is saved with a huge handbag for me/i try to buy a round/i think/i am sure i tried to buy a round/i'm told no dearie/want some fun dearie? i'm back at the bar/well i'm holding it together for twelve hours now/place almost empty/echoes/some lights on like god found us/well my friend is chatting to the owner/we're waiting on a cab i'm told/you ok i'm asked? i'm head down on the bar/hear her say to the boss hes ok honest/me head down on the bar/well wheres the cab? a straggler in denim/garrulous wide boy talk/tries to shift a can of tennets super for eight quid/i shake my head into his speil/well we got out into the predawn air of pitch black and sad fog/blurred streetlights like drunk angels lipstick smeared form kissing the lords arse . . . slide across the back seat of some cab/well my face is on the rough fabric of a thousand areses/my friend talking with the driver/endless and seamless global small talk/driver well the driver has a high pitched german voice/just like some cliche nazi from some cliche film/well i'm grinning and thinking war criminal/well when we're dropped off and paid up and he's driven off i shout warcriminalnazi into the street/well my friend is shocked/that voice i'm saying/that voice! hahahaha/my friend she says it was a woman from rotterdam would i please not shout nazi out in her street at dawn/well i have a rolling rock in front of the tv/she has supermarket spaghetti out a tin on toast/i go sleep in the spare room/on the floor on old sofa cushions surrounded by bikes and hoovers and steps and local papers
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