I have waited for them, the uncommitted,
the deceivers, in those strip-lit archipelagos
of uncleared tables, ketchup bottles, smears
of mustard and brown sauce, flaccid chips,
and discarded chicken bones. Usually there’s
a jukebox playing something dead beat
like ‘Telstar’, and a drunk asleep or arguing
with himself, and almost certainly a bored
waitress reluctant to take my order. In the end
it is obvious even to me who never learns or
listens that it’s just another predictable no-
show. Afterwards I walk through blank-eyed
alleys where rats and feral cats dispute their
territory between the sleeping homeless
and drooling dustbins, the wind chasing
styrene coffee cups along the gutters, back to
the emptiness called home, alone there, as my
angry father was alone at the end, waiting for
no-one in that borderless country of the blind.