Leeds

it's dark at 4 pm in leeds
the steeples pierce the skylight till the last of it bleeds
the absent sound of another day as it recedes
into the shadows
until it's nothing

fax papers slipped under the hotel room door
like food for the prisoner or the prospect to the whore
well fed and halfway drunk i ache myself for more
until i'm shadows of myself
until i'm nothing

sixteen black churches burning on the tv
all the way from texas to tennessee
and a politician locks my eye and says to me
there is no crisis here
there's no conspiracy

i crave inertia every move made so i can stop
whatever this madness is in me spinning like a top
on a bed of anxiety over a deep dark drop
down into nothingness
into withoutyouness

was it ever so the evil creep like ivy
a toe hold on the stronger half of nature's dichotomy
i'm beating back a path through nothing more than pure insistence
until here becomes
the distance

hold my head love i'm sick tonight
find the open hole and press your fingers there with all your might
before the last ounce of my spirit bleeds
onto the pristine sheets
of the hotel bed in leeds