Despite cutbacks, delays, interruptions

the poison in my stomach

didn’t succeed. Had to walk from the station
of course, no more buses after 11pm. Feet

sincerely sore, the night suitably spooky, at least rain

didn’t add to my despair. Public transport
doesn’t get any better, often gets worse

and despite gruesome dehydration, moral decay and death

dangling the carrot of survival, I thought
of grander things: could Napoleon at all have won

in 1812? Russia, Russia, it’s always Russia. Can protestors

in Iran win? Fat chance. Then
the violent urge to puke again, indigestion

proper is properly vile. It must’ve been that $15 dark

ale — fifteen dollars, for fuck’s sake — that festers
down there. Eerily electrified sign

sports at the driveway to an industrial park

a man (whose face reminds me of a suicidal colleague
at work) shirtless, abs, biceps, idiotic, desperate. Advertisement

for a gym? Another business that’ll go bust? Another

reminder of what connects my malaise with Napoleon’s defeat
with the Iranians’ preordained failure: murderous overpriced

beer here, implacable Islamist ghouls there, where

did the vision of something that used to be called the West
fuck off to? It’s too dark save for more macabrely lit posters

that can’t be bothered with pausing me, houses for sale

at hysterically high prices. I mean if this is
all that remains of the great civilisation

and this Iranian-born French-obsessed drunk

stands tonight as its sole witness, then
it must’ve already ended, surely, the empire

has fallen. Nothing to celebrate, no time to commiserate

because I’m too hungry, too tired for either joy or tears.