Jane Holland’s ‘Day Tripping’

Day Tripping
Jane Holland
  
Wasted again, I’m slumped
over a fold-up table
in a battered charabanc
by a Stygian river
       listening to nothing.
  
Slumped on both elbows
in whiskeyed vestments,
hair lank with the addict’s
unwashed sheen:
       three months now
unable to pray, or pay rent
or put pen to paper.
  
Slumped, unseen
behind the stained blind
       of a flyscreen
I listen to the wind-shear song
       of nothing
the thin translucent whine
       of nothing
until my bones begin to smoke
my eyeballs roll up white
       and sing.
 
 
First published in Camper Van Blues (Salt Publishing, 2008).

Read more about Camper Van Blues here.
 
Visit Jane’s blog, Raw Light.