The Lily Livered Recluse
Dear Unknown, My eyelids are heavy and weary, yet too timid to embrace each other. Autumn whispers shyly through the netted window. This damp, dismal night is lit only by the sickly glow of flickering neon letters perched atop a preening building, screaming in shades of electric red and yellow. But it is in this horrid limelight that I speak tonight, to an audience of famished trees, elusive crickets and the anaemic winds of October. Through half open eyes I watch this vulgar vista contort itself into hypnotising swirls in the murky puddles that litter the construction site below. In the haziness of a sleepless reverie I could see a reflection of myself in them. These puddles were cowards too, skulking behind a veil of unintelligible obscurity, distorting anything that remotely cared to pry beyond the surface. I think back to the drivel that I have spilled on these pages. Brutish brushstrokes I have smeared canvases with. All those stuffy verses and crude colours never stood...