Hangovers

As I sat on the bus this morning
Hungover to fuck
I wondered how I'd write it down on paper.
The way I feel after a heavy night.
As we all know they are highly unpleasant
The screeching in your ears
Iron-brain
Bell ringing
Spinning liquid
Pulsing eyes
Like a tug of war
And the nausea
Murky depths of a stomach
Alcohol acid bubbling profusely like the mouth of a rabid animal
The craving and the hunger
The dry mouth to which refreshment is destined
but can never seem to come soon enough
To move is to puke
Is to go vertigo and fall down
Shattering your progress
Cold water feels like concentrated nirvana in your mouth
But icey hell on your skin.
Time is a slow healer
And soon we coax ourselves out of the state.
Able again to function above the level of neanderthal
(Just barely)
And then everything changes
Turns itself from ugly to beautiful
When you feel as lousy as possible, when you couldn't feel worse
Regular things become miraculous
Everything else is less lousy.
You can gain perspective and wisdom through hangovers moreso than being drunk (sometimes)
You can leave your house and see true beauty
That burning torch in your eyes
Blue sky, traffic passing you like neither you nor the drivers of the cars and vans and buses knew it but life was bringing you there right then for a reason and even if there wasn't a reason for it it can still be perfect in its insignificance like so many of us would like to be but can't.
We pass a guy leaning on a lamppost with his girl leaning on him.
They look into my sunglasses and I look back at them
And we share it
We are alive at the same time
And even when we're down
Real low down and sick and messy and rank
We are all of these things together
And that makes us solid
And we have the ability but not the means
So we'll be forever damned to our lives of nothingness.
You realise this and you can be happy
When you're hungover like I am
You can't help but laugh
When you feel that low
Hungover
By your own hand you confound yourself
You wan't to be hungover.
In the city
Eaing cheeseburgers for breakfast
Ice-cold coke
Look out at the buildings and imagine everything they're doing in there.
How their lives, their hangovers are ticking by.
You look up and you're alone
And your peace is right there
Alone with your burgers
Knowing you're always catching good breaks
But never realising it
That's what a hangover can do.
It switches everything on
Life lightens up around you
Until you recover
Or go to work
Then you just have to start it up again.
Start getting hungover once more.