Takeaway Food

lovers paint hearts into the frost and ice on windscreens, their breath fogging up the glass like cheap sex in a doorway. rain drizzles down, soft and useless, on rows of scooters hunched in the alley, seats glazed with ice, waiting for some fool to come along and chip it off with a credit card that’s already maxed out.

frozen cars, frozen people, frozen love —
same cliché, different decade.

I’m leaning against a lamppost in Brewer Street, cigarette dying between my fingers, watching the whole circus of life stagger past. a couple of hours ago, I was parked up at the Dog and Duck, swallowing warm rum and stale lies, and now I’ve got a greasy paper bag swinging from my fist — sweet-and-sour pork bleeding through the bottom, a dirty Chinese straight from a neon joint in Chinatown that smells like bleach and regret.

bought a porno mag,
from the darkness in Soho,
easing into sleep.