Thursday, June 24, 2010

how to write a drunk poem: the pageant night had promised?

Out of a great nothing, a theology.
Out of the amorphous, an edgeless body.
- Mark Jarman

forgive my lack of capital letters or proper punctuation or decent line breaks or artful articulation

i got down with Dionysus last night
and cappuccino
and red bull (disgusting, actually, how do people drink that)
and vodka
and more wine
i do knot recommend this combination

nor do i recommend allowing your sister to convince you to wear high heels
to a restaurant for which you forget directions
and end up hiking La Plaka's cobbled tops and turves
with only the confused compass of asking others to show you the way
after a self-proclaimed ununiformed "police officer" tells you your map is wrong
and a cab driver admits he's driving in squiggles

instead of diamonds on the soles of my shoes
I awake to blisters on the soles of my feet,
which feel merely like blisters
because my brain is stale bread sopped in booze

O, but it's all in the fun
walking on edges now
the outskirts of my feet
an echo from behind the factory:
"you unmitigated disaster, you!"
mwahahahahahahaa

vaguely remember a story about Helen of Troy
and her steamy affair with Paris after earnestly trying to make it work with her husband
analogized to a Greek island tryst of consensual moaning after the blush of flattery
moralled that not only men can enjoy variety in lovers,
but what is this obsession with numbers?

AND OMG THE ACROPOLIS!
erected and sanctified by memory,
thousands of stones mortared together
platforming the Parthenon and the Parthenon still
waiting to receive our unjesused prayers after all these years
while America's paint cracks
like sitting on a bag of potato chips--
before you have a chance
to spoil the grandkids,
foundations crunch to crumbs
and we batter-up the wrecking balls
after the umpire strikes you out (while the empire strikes back)
for your addiction to online poker and HSN
and you twenty years ago, still in the promise
trucks in rooms from a catalog
that slot together like the legos we played with as kids
before the big bad divorce blows the house down
or they sell it to pay off the mortgage

as I watched yesterday,
watery sky turn orange soda turn red wine
something magically modern bounded through the ancient air
those still employed walls, once constructed
to denizen the thinking mind,
logical as rooftops in summer,
civilized as question marks,
dependable as sunset,
inspiring as a hangover.

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