deities, drunken & sober;

It’s two pots o’ coffee a day when I’m fixin’

to put the booze down,

more or less working up another appetite

to make quick work of the chaos and order,

then making another aerial plunge diagonal

and down to rungs deeper than previous.

­

And as is pretty much the case that when

the blood is not right and the

borders are in the bottle’s neck,

the restrictions get tapered, torn and protested

in an illusion game of time—in having a lot of it,

­or not enough of it, or not wanting any more of it.

­

I get bored of drinking, the primrose plop, then

get bored of being sober and the devouring of time

like cleaned & well-prepared fish;

straightening rods and ballbearings seemingly

stuffed up and into my spine, stiffening,

keeping me marshaled and dealing out the days

in prayer position toward my sobering deities.

­

Once again I find myself protégé to The Pilot—he,

spineless as cinnamon—with a technical touch to

life much like captaining a plummeting Cessna

with the engine half-missing.

I’m winging in his draft,

left with odds of discovering the parachute

or getting burned in a drunken, holy hell.

­

Six months, then two months, and this time

forty-eight hours down the drain,—

& it feels like falling.

Two pots o’ coffee a day… someday.