Lines Written in a Notebook, Bystander Cafe 7:30pm approx

Long day at work. Nine hours. Transient time. Cup of tea in the Bystander Cafe opposite Brighton station. Waiting for Brighton Poetry Society night at 8:00pm. A tangle of buses, taxis, people coming out of Brighton Station. Shifting lights -blue, purple, orange - lighting the path that leads under Trafalgar Street underpass. Everyone wrapped up, pointing towards December. Year-end. Decade-end. A fractious energy haunting us all, nervy, hysterical. I think it's the end of the decade, reviewing the first ten years of the century, new millennium chapter. Time passing. Needing to expel accumulated poison. Necessary but unpleasant. Damp but cold through the day. Now a dry Christmas cold. 'Kansas before the storm hits' (who wrote that?) Feels like Kansas. Hope this is the storm already here. Melodrama and over exaggeration - my two main talents... Drink tea. Think of smoking a cigarette on the way down to the Sanctuary Cafe. Waiting for sleep. Hoping the bedsit turns out okay. Remember I used to live round here. Studio flat in Buckingham Street. Three and a half years - 2003 - 2007. Black sky, clear air, autumn done with. Only winter remaining. Drink tea and watch the televised gameshow reflected in the Bystander Cafe windows.