24 Birthday Hours

A Midnight Text
The phone is bleeping, a birthday greeting
From across the oceans, written with love’s devotion
Me, struggling to sit up….
Well, I, couldn’t really give a fuck
Didn’t even realise it was that time
Time for another hit, where’s that gear of mine

Sitting on the stains and spilt drink
In a squat of strangers and stink
A dog astray, you look this way
A toddler at play, mum wasting away,
What do we say?
JUST DON’T KNOCK ANYTHING OVER

1.12 am
My girl walks in, fresh from the street
Blatantly clucking, her face looks beat
‘Oi Bitch you got the loot’, he says
‘You know what he was a cunt n didn’t pay’
Silence is cutting, then a TV he’s throwing
Out the window, smashing loudly below

Electricity sparking, the dog’s barking
The kid waking, me… puking
Upstairs they go, to fix the flow
She’ll be giving him a blow, I know
Another voice ‘Hey Sexy, come we take another hit
‘Isn’t it your birthday, you wanna jus shoot it?’

4.20 am.
Horizontal I’m lying, immobile I’m flying
The stillness is dancing, the silence is singing,
Then, shit… consciousness pollutes my party.
On top of me, a burnt fag, under me…. gravity.
Peeling away from the bay in which I lay
In a dissaray. not wanting to leave… or stay

At the wheel under the hood, throwing up my childhood
On the tarmac floor from an open door
Of a moving car that… I’m driving
Not getting very far… Still soaring.
Sneaking and stumbling in, don’t wake Mum now
Another text – ‘Got u birthday surprise, meet me tomorrow.’

A Daytime Celebration
Sarj the shotter picked me up in a stolen car
And pick up he did. 20 bag of each, what a star
Scag & bone, all wrapped up in rizla paper
Placed in a cracked, plastic ‘21st’ Hallmark tumbler
'Found’ in the bedroom of a ‘found’ house
Where we now sit, along with a scurrying mouse

The quiet surrounds, deserted and desolate.
Squatting on a shredded sofa, time to celebrate
Packing the pipe with sweet goodness, chasing dragons
Give it to me quick, not caring what else happens
(Fags, cheap vodka, puke bucket at the ready)
It’s a fitting happy Birthday festivity for Me

The Evening Comes
Surely we’ll make a big deal, a cake from mother
Cards from friends, A visit from sister
A normal rite of passage to mark the big occasion
That evening, what happened? I have no recollection.
Presents, music, I could have had it all
But what I do know, is that Daddy didn’t call