Once I drink it all,
     and can drink some more.
Then just a cup or two,
     and I'm jabbering like a fool.
Yesterday, a swirl and a whiff,
     and my tongue's a pen and I sing in fifths.
Today, the spirit’s overflowing,
     and I'll do anything on a prayer and a wing.

Debauched nights, destruction waning,
There is a twisted pull to the underbelly.
Chaos is ****, like silk stockings and
Bonnie an Clyde.
I can smell it a mile away,
like a dog in heat.
It lures me from the
safety of my sweet calm life.
There is an existence beyond
the bridge, but it's boring and soulless.
I want to ****** the light, and
the routine.  Dredge the marrow
from the bone

It's been one of those days,
Where I don't quite feel
Human.
Those days where my brain is elsewhere.

Like it's in the supermarket,  
And my bodies woken up in the car
Almost sure where it is.

Like I've just sat down,
And my brain's not sure where to sit.

Like I've lost track of how many drinks I've had,
But I can tell you I've been drunk 4 nights this week.

Outside lying on his back
In a pool of his own ****
Up to his shoulder blades,
His whiskers slobbering spit,
***** pooling in his lap,
Leather stomacher exposed,
His belly spilling out a gap.

Rolling side to side,
Screaming obscenities,
Flailing hog stuck in muddy sty,
Cursing desperately for help,
Screaming to anyone, to God,
Up in a wheeling, blurry sky.

Too much to drink that day,
Too much for 40 years,
Too much whiskey every day
Led to his *****-filled fears...
Stumbled him; tumbled him away.

We boys had headed to the bar
For burgers before a game;
Saw Charlie rolling on his back,
Fighting no one in the street,
Bare ****** in his drunken sinning,
Terrified and terrorized,
Moaning and bawling and spinning
Under a sunny, small-town sky.

When Brian tried to get him up,
Old Charlie's cursing grew,
And Brian backed up laughing,
Not knowing what to do.

I stood a ways away,
Hadn't seen a thing like this before,
Until a couple men came out
And dragged old Charlie in a door.

Forty years have gone, I guess,
And Charlie's been gone twenty,
But when I stop to think of him,
I ask myself if I've had plenty,
And tell the waiter, "Two is fine;
I'm done tonight, I guess."
And pay my check while I can see
To leave a little for the rest.

Shallow still darkness, angless shapes
move across the floor. Your teeth bite
down on my little moving parts, slip softly into comatose.

The stench from your breath is acerbic, rotten
particles of yesterday's remembrance floating in between canine,
molars, pearly whites.

I love the feeling, love the dead pan feeling. Comatose
take me to the underworld it took you.

I.* there is no thicker undergrowth than feeling. first to go is reason, everything
    else levitates into something graver than say, one foot deep  in the grave
     and the other somewhere off-tangent like an offbeat adagio zigzagging
      into slammed slalom.

II. the crush of oregano against mortar, and the clasping of a hand. carbon monoxide
      fades into air as youth takes on momentousness. take for instance this once soft
    hand like a breath of cotton in a precipitate noon: once whirling in claustrophobic
      space, this slight inch of feelingfulness is dazed into the span of *Maya windhovering
       somewhere unseen like paramours *******.

III. from the window you can feel the bluster of falsetto disintegrate at its slouched peak,
       and from where you hear it, a dance thwarts itself like a cigarette ember
       convulsing mid-air – that slow, repugnant twitch: that is you, when you first
        broke your silence in thick shrouds of disgust over strobe-lighted simian jaw.

IV. what else is there but to take this sour ocean in front of me and decode something
       the blue always means mellow but the froth of white something the tragic caprice
        of tropic: some nights, they remind me of bodies careening repeatedly; some days
                    they just are, like you, just are, like a riot and only sound, or sleep and only
          reticence, something short of wonder and terse with reply.

V. there is a cluster of harmonies flowering in my mind when the sensurround of din
        starts conflagrations in the ornate dark of ear. my limbs snake in the garden
        of plank, my shin bitten in sharp reiterations – my mind crossing the equinox
         looking for shade, or possible, a parasol underneath the crimson of rain.
           say this is the sky, this dense space when I motion both hands into a length
       not an inch could ever devour. suddenly a boy made out of a man, flustered
        in jangled arpeggios and unapologetic thought like a letter of debt opened,
         paying no heed the mind and only what the body dictates: a smash on the
    escritoire or vigorously scratching scalp, reopening scabs and watching
                old blood ooze dry like a lightweight webbed impression
  of       a    dreamy legato.

VI. the night deepens with the warmth of its black upholstery – we do not know
      when to stop and bid for home. last to go is will of force and first to arrive
     in the bleakness like a recalcitrant thought often straying outside with the
       strut of a yuppie, fervor of old haunt. i conjure an image over the cold chair,
    its steel framework thighs untouched, its four decrepit legs the foundation
       of something that refuses to admit its weakness. the very base of what would
   catch the anchorage of my gravity, the very heart of all, and the flattened back
      with a vandal that says “Soleil was here.” the liver shattering in the trance
                    of everything.

VII. night is stupor. i am the lilt of words from a rambunctious machine.         there seems to be an afterthought that separates
                       a concept of vastness and the tactility of narrow ether.
        a word is uttered in extremis - something heaven eschews
                with its bright, arrogant face.

" Du Kannst Mich am Arsch Licken''
'' Kiss my ***''
the 1 litre cider bottle's out
he takes a swig
then throws his old head back
simulating electric chair death
throws, silence permeates
the wary room
'' Baby....don't....go''
'' Long live Rock n' Roll''
in his thick German accent
before that he asked
'' Who is Allen Ginsberg-
really, Howl, poetry?''
someone afterwards says
'' It's like seeing the ghost
of Bukowski''
the room doesn't say much
but I feel a warmth
for him, reminding me
of my heart's home:
Berlin. Yes, the Germans
they're like this,
they don't take any ****
their hearts
are made of grit
& their drunks
are different from ours,
yes, they talk
of Nijinsky
& the *Ballet Russes
intellectuals
even when they're plastered
'' You may be my enemy
but with a drink you are my friend''
he said & echoes of the War
permeated the dark
& faded time back to the present
opening the night
to better things