The Witching Hour
While newly-weds
are jungled in their beds
and Camden’s randy mandem
Slide into your DM’s
The sticky nightclubs
open their legs
To London’s lonely hearts
Torch that figure of cardboard
You’ve pretended to be
Since Monday
Shave your groin
Cake your face in makeup
Stuff your shyness
Into a shoebox
And slide it under your bed
The neon is buzzing for you
And the boys with Topman underwear
have invested in quilted condoms
Tinderphiles:
Drugged up
Dragged up
On the raz
Tubthumping
Dry humping
Paint the town brown
indulging in the bulging darkness
Where the entrance fee
Costs more than your entire outfit
Pill popping millennials
Enmeshed in the sesh are
Waiting for the drop
As a crumpled divorcee
waltzes
With her blushing Bumble date
Each in a seizure of pleasure
Beer bubbles in
their bellies like boozy jacuzzis
Neither of them looked like their photos
but they didn’t mind
For when your love life is an empty caboose
Any lips will do
Her time-honoured breasts
lurch and he
Buries his smiling face
Into her vintage cleavage
The snug warmth of their bodies
Held like poppy’s
tightly against their chests
Was enough for tonight
Their lips eclipse
And ebony and irony
Sway together
In perfect harmony
Down yonder in the unisex bogs
the mirror swallows
a gaggle
of pleather jacket-clad
LAD Bible disciples
Either pissing
or sniffing
or stiffening
their quiffs
as faded
signs peel off the walls:
‘ANYBODY FOUND TAKING DRUGS (or a shit)
MAY BE ASKED TO LEAVE (for a bit)’
and
‘COCKBLOCKING
IS NOT PERMITTED
UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’
Calcium-deficient poets
Sway enigmatically to the music
A patch of wilting wallflowers
Being teased by the breeze
Some balding born-again anarchist
Toupees his way into
A student night disco
Looking for a kiss
Tonight
The fates of the lonely hearts
Will traverse a wide spectrum
Of joy and despair:
Slow and gentle
In Walthamstow Central
Collapse of the brain
In Brick Lane
Erectile dysfunction
In Dalston Junction
These nights
Under the lamplights
can be frightful
cocaine and kebab hour falls
And the luckless fuckboys
Who had no nibbles
At the bar
Begin drafting their booty calls
They want to know if YOU’RE still up
But slutdrop the dust
Off your dancing shoes
The liquorice witch
is watching
Drowning in an alco-K-hole
Slow dancing to dubstep
She scans the floor
of dribbling geezers
And says:
“Not one of those dregs
Is fit to fill
the vacancy between my legs”
The drug dealers
Are on strike
So she breezes
to the nearest gay bar
endless legs
Like pylons
Wrapped in
ripped nylon
I’m here (as is she)
to claim the hand
Of someone
Who can STAND me
In a fit of puny unity
I found her
she found me
She spoke in songs
and poetry
Velvet dress, red lipstick
Her eyes were full of music
The looming marble moon
(working nights as usual)
Observes the absurdity
Writing in the notes
on its phone:
‘they’re getting on like a blouse on fire.’
Tomorrow we’ll
wake, entwined
With a headache
And the quilted guilt
Of having pissed away
a week’s-worth of pot noodle money
But happiness is a warm mattress
And if a rail-replacement bus
Crashes into us
To die by her side
well I really wouldn’t mind.
