Broken Homes

it’s a bitch trying to miss them on that black path before dawn, stumbling half-drunk on sleep with your eyes still glued shut from last night’s whiskey. you try, Christ you try, squinting into the nothing, but it always ends the same: a wet pop under the shoe and the morning gets its first taste of death.

is it a shadow, or just some curled-up leaf laughing at you?

who gives a shit — you’re a tired bastard shuffling toward the garage for the bike, then the early train to London, another day of getting screwed by the clock.

then it comes, that soft crunch as some summer snail goes under your heel, the whole house and everything in it smeared flat in one careless step, guts running across the concrete for the ants to lap up.

and there they are, the little black priests of the sidewalk, mandibles clacking hymns, wings twitching like junkies as they swarm the corpse in a frenzy of joy — the same look a kid gets when you hand him an ice-cream on a hot day and he knows the whole world is his for five minutes.

they haul off the chunks, the juice, the good stuff, stockpiling for the big freeze, while I stand there with snail blood on my sole and the taste of nothing in my mouth, heading into another day that don’t give a damn whether I live or die.

gravely saddening,
at least three or four today,
I had a flat tyre.