Mnemonica Poem by James Atkins

Waking to find you're Jack again,
with the same old missing hours of sleep and
disjointed gaps in-

The crashing procession of a train in the distance,
cigarette smoke hanging in tired morning wreaths,
and drawers lined with coffee stained newspapers from 1971.

Leaning out the window to blink into the ten o'clock sun
Buying a loaf of bread to match the milk on the doorstep-
wait, how-
wait-

and drinking in some pub in Spencer Street, tasting blood
staggering backwards from a shadow with broken teeth
red-armed junkies lying in pools of fluorescence-
but-

dropping the knife in a laneway
following a madman's path of dead streetlamps
laughing or sobbing, too tired to tell
stumbling on a staircase with threadbare carpet,
beer-bottle vision clouded by blackness that flows
from the inside out-
and-

Waking to find you're Jack again,
with the same old missing hours of sleep and
disjointed gaps in-