‘We’re in this

apart’

chortled the bloated sweater

in his buttonless cardy,

spurting twenty sober years

into my twenty dry minutes

A moistening newbie, 

taking one small step for

unkind

manipulative addicts

one giant leap

to a slipper print

in the quick drying cement

of the AA’s garden path,

just eleven more to the

promised land

of grey tea and

Styrofoam cups.

 

My name is

unimportant

and I’m talking bollocks.

 

The circle circuited

school chairs a second time,

units, divorces, police, pools of piss

spreading under park benches.

Fermented stories of

demented glories

made me walk

straight to Mr. Patel’s Booze Bargains

and a police cell,

my life on the brink

of falling

together.