Howard Firkin
Just ice without the alcohol, just speed
without the high… It’s what you might call pretty
pointless—thoughts of you and feeling shitty…
Forever unresolved: desire and need.
      I realise this doesn’t make much sense.
But memories are losing definition,
the symptoms now are milder than before,
the pocks are less volcanic though still sore,
and each infection marks a new remission:
      attacks of you become their own defence.

I can’t afford the feelings I once had—
you’re not worth one last night out on the piss.
Like all the worst songs of Anon & Trad,
you don’t deserve forgetting, lover. Just this.