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