I only drink in poetry.
I get drunk on Scotch
in most poems I am
in. Liquid courage
with little slips of
reality fall from my
pen. I registered
raindrops on my
eyelids. I have a
huge distrust of
the past. My
conscious always
flicking back. I try
to sanitize it like
a mirror wiped
clean in my
favorite gas
station bathroom.
Drinking my imaginary
demon juice. I swallow
regret. I thrive on
the blessed mayhem
of the million words
that light up the dark
skies of my mind
Like Beethoven my
fist in the cloud
of nature’s fireworks
Like Poe and the moon.
I see its reflection in
the graveyard.
Nostalgic for things
better kept lost.
The conjugations of
dead verbs and words
to forget.
I drink falling mountains
in a field alone. My
words dissolve in the
mist but never the dew.
My poem is a prayer
of denial. The emptiness
of a stone Madonna
or a stoned Madonna.
A benediction to a rotting
tree that should have been
cut down years ago.
I take another drink.
Maybe in my next poem
I’ll sober up and praise
what is to become.
Everything I Never Told You 