The great provoker

I know it can’t be. And I know it shouldn’t be, will never be, must never be. And I know you shouldn’t be talk­ing to me when you’re noth­ing but an inan­im­ate object. Noth­ing but a mere obelisk of imper­fect glass. And I know that I shouldn’t hear its watery pleas. And I know that I should simply ignore it. Block it out and sing over its taunts and tempta­tions and its liquid wiles. Or listen to a real voice, real but delayed, sing for me over its taunts and tempta­tions. Sing louder, my echo. Sing louder for me. Sing louder. Sing out and over. Over­come and over every­one and all. Put your spin on his words of weary splend­our. Apply your voice to the inter­pret­a­tion of the con­demned man’s faded urban poetry, freshly stripped from the sidewalk’s rain sod­den slabs.

I’m going now. I’m run­ning. I’m speed­ing. I’m racing like a pro­noun. But some­times. Only some­times. Just some­times. Once in a grey Lon­don moon, the sharp stabbing alco­hol talks to me. Not through my veins or through my brain, but from out there in the cold dark kit­chen. A neg­lected room that is at times home to a south-western con­stel­la­tion, bathing the cup­boards in a phos­phorus essence. An unreal glow. As you are unreal. Yet there you are. Right there. Where I knew you would be. Hid­den in the corner. Wrest­ling against harm­less sugar-free sub­stances selling their wares in cheap plastic. And I can hear the drip, the incess­ant drip, the drip drip drip of the loose tap. Everything needs fix­ing, needs tight­en­ing and mak­ing new. A dose of shine will see things straight, it always does. That infernal faucet offers such a rhythmic accom­pani­ment to the wait­ing and the paus­ing and the hold hold hold. But no. Not again. This is me and this is me and that’s me in the mir­ror, look­ing askance. He dis­ap­peared for days. He was gone, well and truly. Well and truly gone. And this. And this. And this is mine and that is mine too. I don’t claim any­thing, but this is all mine. I hope some­body will take it from me. Entomb it in con­crete and send it plunging towards the sea bed. Where. Where this can rest for pos­ter­ity, for all and ever and ever, amen. This is my moment. This is my time. The time to seize the day. But no. How can I? No. It’s night now. It’s night. So seize me. Take my sud­den seizure. When it comes. Now. Seize this night and wrench it away from the day. I know, I know that I must warn you. Because I will refute all com­mon sense at four in the morn­ing. All wise words will van­ish. I will shout. I will shout and scream and bawl and wail and throw. I always have, and I always will. I will cast out seem­ingly unearthly sounds like a dumb­struck baby. Like some putrid, entrail-scarred new­born that has been pre-poisoned by its mother’s filthy habits. By its father’s deprav­ity. By the tox­ins they took and the smoke they inhaled. By the pol­luted breaths they forced into each other’s lungs in the heat of viol­ence. By all that they intim­ately swapped, saliva-scarred and bloody, in hours of deep pun­ish­ing kisses. But not now. Not this time. Not again. Not again. Because. Because I can’t and I won’t.

Because when these mists last des­cen­ded, this ves­sel had remained firmly shut for weeks. The con­tents had not been revealed to me for months, for years, even for dec­ades. Neither the box nor the bottle belonged to me. Neither the cel­lar nor this trap­door were mine to enter. But there’s the rub. And here’s the out­come. This is the answer you’ve been wait­ing for. For so long. For so, so long. Tell me. Because, you see, I’m not an alco­holic. This is tonight’s last con­fes­sion. I’ll write it in a steady hand. For you to read in a clear, unbroken voice. This is your final state­ment of fact before dawn breaks. I don’t need the dead­en­ing. I don’t need it. But some­times, yes some­times, I just go look­ing. Scrab­bling in the dirt. Tear­ing up pav­ing stones and rap­ing the earth between my torn and bit­ten fin­ger­nails. I want it sur­ging and wast­ing and ebbing and flow­ing and drug­ging me for days on end. Even as it’s enliven­ing. You know. Oh, you know. You know very well.

I could sit here with this com­fort­ing bottle, unscrew the top and just inhale. Just get pleas­antly numb. But pleas­antly numb, even com­fort­ably numb, means noth­ing without. Without that. Without the sense of heavy-lidded, loose-skiinned com­plete­ness that fol­lows. Without the thor­ough­ness that suc­ceeds where oth­ers have failed. Without the fall­ing, the sleep­ing, the breath­ing, the leav­ing. Those dreams of leaving.

This means noth­ing if I don’t fly free of terra firma’s vice-like grip. This means noth­ing if I don’t find my bed, my sleep and my rest. And this will mean even less than noth­ing if I don’t slide my head under the pil­low and sing — soft, slow and sweet — those sen­ti­mental Ger­man lul­la­bies of mine. Mur­mured into the feathers.