This afternoon, it's tonight, The Hacienda,
four pale-faced twenty-somethings, plugging in,
exchanging glances and nods, a 1-2-3,
playing songs with titles like 'Disorder',
its lyrics like a broken record, 'feeling, feeling, feeling.'
I'm one of the first to hear those opening notes,
watch that convulsive front man,
who seems to be on drugs
or in need of drugs or a hot meal
as he stares out beyond the crowd,
the walls, to the north,
the city, to all the norths, and all their cities
and all the lights of all the houses
of all the men who having eaten want more,
or maybe it's to the audience of himself,
the north of himself, his soul's streets, and houses
lit through a winter fog, closing in.

• Andrew Jamison's second collection is due from Gallery Press this year