Maybe

Liquorice

Whenever thoughts of you cause me to reluctantly cry,
I am never sure whether I am happy or I am sad,
And I decide in the end with stained cheeks, red eyes,
That I am both.

I wake up once more from a dream where I remember
That I was sitting on a train,
Alone in an empty, bare carriage,
Perched with legs dangling from the side,
And I stared at the countryside passing me by,
And the tall city in the grey evening of the beginning of nowhere
That was about to greet me,
And for some reason it made me think of you.

My neck is cold, my feet and fingers are always numb,
Lethargy is torturing me and indecision blocks my lungs,
An invisible presence has been living behind my tongue,
And water just won't wash it away.

I have my addictions, and I never want to close my eyelids anymore,
And this past while sleep leaves my eyes stained with kohl,
There are lipstick fingerprints resting upon my mirror,
And all I'm doing is waiting for the sunset to swallow me whole.

And I'll go insane if I continue to welcome madness,
But what else is there to do apart from yawn?
My days are taken up with doing nothing at all,
Because it takes forever to complete.

Let me lie yet again for half an hour in an empty bath,
I'll play these silly games with myself, pretend,
Let me pretend that these mind-games I play with myself,
Are just games,
Let me pretend that it is someone else's hand on my paper thigh.

With balance long lost I won't be caught until after I hit the ground,
I'll make another false decision, for the sake of my pride,
But concealed in an abstract corner deep within my mind,
I know that where I am is where I will remain.

But I'll smile sadly each time I think of you,
And not because there's nothing else to do,
I breathe in the beauty of an old, downtrodden town,
And of tired suburbs where wilting houses feel down,
When your sellotaped photograph hides behind my eyes.

You remind me of the N11 in the dark,
And of all the strangely ghost-like cars,
You remind me of staring down on the city at night,
And of wondering whether I see sunken stars instead of lights,
You remind me of each word of Kerouac's I have read,
And of each time I look out of the window by my bed,
You remind me of observing others through cigarette smoke,
And of sitting beneath willow trees and evergreen oaks,
You remind me of winter when I wander alone,
And of when I guess at strangers' lives as I pass their faded homes,
You remind me of the intricate veins drawn on my arm,
And of the faint, bleating sound of a distant alarm,
You remind me of running blinded through the rain,
And of everything that alleviates these silly pains,
You remind me of everything that is sweetly, happily melancholy,
And at the moment,
At the moment I'm just not sure why.

And maybe none of the above are true,
Maybe all of those things remind me of you.