The Storm

the sky over Jesus Green is one big hangover, black and bloated, hanging there like a drunk who won’t leave the bar. it’s waiting, holding, ready to let it all go in one grand pathetic flood.

then it starts.

I look up through the shitty streetlight that’s got a sign dangling off it—faulty, please report—like anybody gives enough of a fuck to call it in. the damn pole stands there next to this fat plum tree, both useless against what’s coming.

the rain hits like a fistful of nails.

slams into my face so hard it feels personal. little moths, drunk on the light, powder-winged idiots, spin around in that sick orange glow, getting smashed by drops the size of pound coins. they’re looking for a place to crawl into and die dry, just like me.

the leaves take the beating better than I do. big drops explode on them, veins lit up from underneath like some cheap neon in a whorehouse window. water bounces, breaks into mist, drifts down soft as a woman’s lie, lands on my eyelids, my cheeks, runs into my mouth tasting of rust and city.

and there I am, alone, naturally.

standing in the middle of this biblical piss-storm thinking about South Africa because even when you’re soaked to the bone in Cambridge the mind still drags you back to the one place that kicked your teeth in harder than the rain ever could.

funny how that works. or maybe it isn’t funny at all.

rain hammers the skull,
hangover’s fog lifts in sheets—
goddamn wet alarm.