Psychotherapy for Alcoholics

waves of nausea
in a wonton
hedonistic flash
we wash our sorrows
in beers
until they sparkle
till they seem
like routine
kitchen machines.
Having a sorrow
as an everyday guest
is dangerous,
sometimes when the sob
catches
beneath your throat
unsure if your heart is stopping
or your lung is collapsing,
the time seems right
for a diluted night
soothing heart attacks
of tragedy
washing and tending
the sorrows of calamity.

One of those old poems from back in the day

 

 

Craziness, like an unopened forty visits at night

worrying, like a paranoid mother,

that her children may not be dreaming,

tucking the covers around their chins

whispering sweet nothings

about boot grinding and whippings.

So they rose with mouths frothing

the memory of the muddy road 

fresh on their cheeks,

without really meaning to 

the children exploded and populated

the galaxy with their pulsating bodies.

A milky way flowing away from mother’s tits

and splattering on the black

of the deathless universe

drip dropping farther and further

until the blackness did not look so black

but encrusted with mother’s milk

and peppered with children sliding and spitting

everyone slurping furiously before the curdle

too busy to notice that the white shower

was over.

Mother, after all, was far away by then.

Someone opened the bottle

and the white crust was stained

with sour brown,

glass shattered across the white mesa

with milky boulders and mountainous cliffs.

The children scattered as they puked yellow,

forgot the milky path in the brown cushion,

splattered marshes and trees while they

forgot the high places.

Then the first drip of dark red

cut a river between the children and

sprouted unknown pools and fell into 

new tributaries.

A fog of heat dissipated over the

white and spotted brown

and fell again onto the faces

of the dreaming children with jagged

knives of brown glass in their hands

and so they stood until 

one-by-one they dropped off into

dead sleep

to find refuge from their

splitting headaches, pounding temples

achy limbs.