You feel like you’re shadow sliding,
enduring the rough-shod reckoning,
the pain you feel is so powerful, so powerful,
Rum and coke was the first,
Captain Morgan’s on my 19th,
We drank and watched the Bruce Willis flop, Hudson Hawk.
Him, his girlfriend, and me.
He walked me home as I found inclines steeper than they should be.
First drink was on an old stained carpet, medium pile,
piss stains in the corner from when he was too drunk to walk to the bathroom,
piss stains lined with cans of Milwakee’s Best Premium.
Belly-bulged, you’ve got to, got to, got to make this shot,
dunno if you can handle one more beer sloshing around in you,
can feel it sliding up your sides when you move, sloshing out your ears,
all you want is that cartoon logic,
hold your nose, blow it all out your ears.
Just something to release the pressure,
but she’s beautiful, and she loves beer pong,
and you’re both losing,
but when the game’s over, you both have to admit that she should go home,
so you go belly-bulged and sloshing, turn after turn,
turn after turn,
until you’re too drunk, too drunk,
and then she cries and tells you secrets.
You remember them and write poetry,
but she keeps on keeping them.
Before the doors open 9AM on a Sunday,
we’re touring the store,
shelf after shelf of wine, of spirits, of beer,
I know people who would know me as a sin shiller,
and they wouldn’t get past that we’re open at 9AM on a Sunday,
and I’m taking to IDing folks like a duck to water,
and I’m doing the best I know how,
getting them in and out and home,
at leaast four spending well over a hundred and fifty dollars,
and good for them,
have a good time,
but they go and shame someone for spending $15 on a handle of Vodka,
and passing out in front of the television?
Does it make it better if it’s a $50 bottle of Brandy?
we poets, we get this hurt built up in our soul,
and it’s natural to want to diffuse that,
it’s so powerful, so powerful,
but there’s this great grand world outside us,
and it’s a matter of context.
it’s a matter of wonder.
it isn’t your pain that makes you write,
and it isn’t the liquor,
we sin shillers deal heaps of profits from both.
you may only be buyin’ $15 worth,
but those tremble-teared-eyes say you’ll be back again.
you write to write,
and that don’t change, no matter the inspiration.
It’s a matter of wonder.
Where we’ve been does not dictate where we’ll go.
Getting so drunk that you piss in the corner,
doesn’t make you incontenant.
