It’s fifty minutes and a bottle of wine past four
In the morning. Soon the rooster will be crowing.
No, I’m in the city after all.

Didn’t go out.
Don’t know why.
Enjoyed a late night bath.
Don’t know why.
Though, I had some laughs
Thanks to all that tasty wine.

Ashtray filling up with fags.
Bags beneath my eyes.
Not tired though. Just smoking.
At the keyboard gently poking.
Prodding, really, like swatting flies
With your fingers.

Bedtime lingers.

Better strike up one more tab.
Commit this butt to the ashen slab.
Lighter’s dead, so fetch another.
Say what? Yeah, who are you – my mother?

What have I been doing with my time?
Sitting here and sipping wine,
Too drunk to think of a proper rhyme.
Half-rhyme, is what it is. There. Sublime.

Yeah, that verse wasn’t that impressive.
Op pressive, rather, but what do you expect?
I’m drunk. I’m pensive.
Lucid only inasmuch as there’s still wine
Not reached my veins yet,

The room around me slowly spinning,
The wall behind me slowly winning,
Catching up to the wall to my side.
And in the corner of my eye
I watch it spin with grace and pride.

Damn, only three more cigarettes.
There’s the lighter. Two more now.
I’ll buy more when I wake up anyhow.

Intriguing, really, what I write.
Poetry of this sort’s not quite
My style. Usually there’s structure.
There’s texture. There’s thought.
Not this punctuated stream so dull.
Hang on! Why’s my glass still full?
I don’t remember, can’t recall.
I thought I’d long since drunk it all.

If only time flew by as fast
As cigarettes burn.
I’ve smoked a million, yet I never learn
That cigarettes just never last.

Just lit up another. Three of them left again.
Must have missed that there were four
When I checked the pack before.
Thank God for those small surprises.

Have I smoked this tab already?
Or did I just leave it somewhere?

Hope I don’t wake to find my flat ablaze,
Fuck, my mind’s a haze.
I’ll never find my way out of this maze.
Where’s the bed? No, screw the bed! Where’s my tab?
I’m sure there was still smoke in it up for grabs.

Glass half empty. Two more in the pack.
What I want is what I lack,
But this isn’t the proper forum for specifications.
Leave that for private conversations
And the cigarettes for breakfast.

Inebriated. Shouldn’t I be considering life?
Shouldn’t I be pondering fate?
Is it too late? Am I too tired?
My nerves too tightly wired?

Ended up with a bottle of red.
And now it is time for bed.
But how to end this poem right?