The Drowning Of St Christopher

There's no heart in the men who run these mountain bars
All love extinguished by location and cold fronts
Dogs in the parking lot surround the car for scraps of affection
For eyes not glazed over like black ice
Thousands of kilometres of roughage and terracotta roofs
Horizons replaced by horizons
We run the belly of rainclouds between madrid and valencia
With the radio tuned into the weather we don't have
St christopher drowns crossing the river
Firs blown onto the windscreen disperse like a pack of tiny black birds
Service stations are watched over from the hills by shepherds
Who spend all their days flooded by thought
A deafening meditation
The cowbells, like bloody church alarms
Smashing the silence of grass, of the air
I am interviewed in a sleepy bar by a girl who wants me to explain
"The warmth of nostalgia," incensed that i "glamourise sadness"
And after seven hours on the road
I have lost all defences - they are roadkill, torn up, gutted
At night, tiny red beacons crown lonely antennas
Everywhere is shepherded in the absence of gods
Cities spoil everything
That there is somewhere to go and something to do
When the partition between sleep
And awake in the back of the van features such happy accidents
Hazed dreams in an unfocused super 8mm
On rainy nights, we are docked in the harbour of circular ballrooms
Playing to the shadows, playing to revolving mirrorballs
Our harbours are in brandy glasses
Our music is swilled
In hostels, fourth floor, bare rooms but for a bed and a sink
We stare vacant at sleeping guitars
Wndering how many fucks and violence
And drugs have intervalled us staring at sleeping guitars
And the taps can't be turned off
And there's suspect movement on the stairwell
Small pictures of boats in storms
Watches and money in our shoes
We wake up and the building is still there
And we're still in it, like miserable captains