Norway House, Manitoba, Canada
—Public Domain Photos
—Public Domain Photos
TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH A DEAD POET
I can’t even drink enough
to keep up with a dead poet,
who made the drunken poem
look easy as changing a light bulb,
while I close the curtains
and try to go to sleep
with the tired idea
of a genius going unread in life,
only to be reborn as a best seller
after a most ordinary death,
but all I know is what I don’t know
(to plagiarize a deceased philosopher
instead of a decomposing poet),
leaving my empty glass with nothing
to fill it, except more whisky.
I can’t even drink enough
to keep up with a dead poet,
who made the drunken poem
look easy as changing a light bulb,
while I close the curtains
and try to go to sleep
with the tired idea
of a genius going unread in life,
only to be reborn as a best seller
after a most ordinary death,
but all I know is what I don’t know
(to plagiarize a deceased philosopher
instead of a decomposing poet),
leaving my empty glass with nothing
to fill it, except more whisky.
NOT MUCH OF A PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while,
but the beers were always too busy
digging up stones in the garden
that my liver had become
and the whisky always was
jealous, so it dug up the yellow flowers
from the beer,
leaving me blacking out
the way death has been hiding
in my shadow from the day I was born
and how my every hangover
felt inevitable as a rebirth myth.
My friend at the time (over twenty years ago)
had testicular cancer
and wanted one last night out
before the surgery that would save his life,
so we went out, but made the mistake
of doing that on a Monday night,
when the bars were dead,
creating a dark premonition
and that was luckily just another
feeling we didn’t talk about.
Four of us went, or was it five?
Alcohol is often thought of as a lubricant
for socializing, but it’s sandpaper
to the memory, especially as you get older.
It was most unsettling,
sitting in empty bars,
where even our youth couldn’t quiet
the cold silence between songs
no one was listening to, or help the liquor
help us remember to forget
the reason we were there.
My sick friend was determined
to have a good time, ordering shots
and making Hitler testicle jokes,
yet I couldn’t drink enough.
Perhaps I was tasting my own mortality
too much, like a child kissing
their dead aunt’s forehead
at their first funeral,
while beer after beer failed
at stopping my mind’s dark clouds
from blocking out the sun
for the yellow flowers I needed,
but I smiled anyway
to look like the good friend
that I knew I wasn’t.
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while,
but the beers were always too busy
digging up stones in the garden
that my liver had become
and the whisky always was
jealous, so it dug up the yellow flowers
from the beer,
leaving me blacking out
the way death has been hiding
in my shadow from the day I was born
and how my every hangover
felt inevitable as a rebirth myth.
My friend at the time (over twenty years ago)
had testicular cancer
and wanted one last night out
before the surgery that would save his life,
so we went out, but made the mistake
of doing that on a Monday night,
when the bars were dead,
creating a dark premonition
and that was luckily just another
feeling we didn’t talk about.
Four of us went, or was it five?
Alcohol is often thought of as a lubricant
for socializing, but it’s sandpaper
to the memory, especially as you get older.
It was most unsettling,
sitting in empty bars,
where even our youth couldn’t quiet
the cold silence between songs
no one was listening to, or help the liquor
help us remember to forget
the reason we were there.
My sick friend was determined
to have a good time, ordering shots
and making Hitler testicle jokes,
yet I couldn’t drink enough.
Perhaps I was tasting my own mortality
too much, like a child kissing
their dead aunt’s forehead
at their first funeral,
while beer after beer failed
at stopping my mind’s dark clouds
from blocking out the sun
for the yellow flowers I needed,
but I smiled anyway
to look like the good friend
that I knew I wasn’t.
I walked home by myself that night.
I left my friend
and the others drinking at the casino.
I wish I could claim
I won a philosophical argument
with the darkness,
but the night felt quieter than usual:
the trees in the park I passed scaring me
as their leaves seemed ghostly,
waiting for autumn to change
their colours and then to die
in winter, while my inability
to get drunk made me feel
like an overwatered patch of dirt
where nothing would ever grow.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.
―Charles Bukowski
_____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Richard LeDue for some fine poetry on this Father's Day, 2025!
A reminder that
Amatoria Fine Arts Books
features a reading by
Women’s Wisdom Art
in Sacramento today, 5pm.
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
Amatoria Fine Arts Books
features a reading by
Women’s Wisdom Art
in Sacramento today, 5pm.
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
Happy Father’s Day!
