Some Velvet Morning

Some Velvet Morning

We didn’t know the time
none of us cared.
We only knew it was late -
but it wouldn’t end for an hour or so at least.

We were where everyone wanted to be
in THE club where anything could happen, and did.
We centred our lives around this seamy
world of white and black, love and hate,
sex interlaced with sadism.
Excess was lauded as an art form, and by the
time the word gothic was heard we had
all moved on.

Around 4.00am with the night already tinged with a sweet sadness
because it was drawing to a close, a sound reached our ears.
A murky, dark, voice sneeringly reverberated around
the small room. We listened, hypnotised. “What‘s this song?” I asked
a man nearby. ‘Some Velvet Morning’ he answered.
We looked at each other wonderingly. The song had captured our
mood so accurately. After it ended we all said we would never
forget this night. It was one of one of those sunlit, spider - web
moments that could never be swept away.

Where will we all be in 20 years, we then
asked each other, laughing at the possible scenarios.
Reflected in our faces was excitement, and the hopes and dreams of youth.
Our charcoal eyes fizzed like fireworks as we
looked forward with optimism to sparkling futures.

Shelly, with her alluring, cats eyes and
Debbie Harry lips, married a soldier and contracted
a virulent strain of ME. She hasn’t worked since.
Debs, with her heart - face and elfin looks, was
diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis as she turned 30.
Beautiful, Boyish Cath went the way many junkies do.
She went on the streets and died a tragic, hookers death.

And what of me - with my ubiquitous black dress
emphasising my peroxide hair and a
body that had turned men into
pitiful, pleading, puddles?

I had a breakdown, and didn’t wear black as a statement, but because
I barely knew what to wear, and cared less.
The drugs they fed me bloated me up, and my features dissolved
into a lined, lumpy looking mass of blotched flesh.

Now? I am just waiting for another velvet morning