Malaise

A year ago you watched bleary-eyed as your third decade rose from blurry horizon in piercing gunshots of emerging sun. Fresh light and clarity, It was clearly time, at last, for mourning. Your reflection got wise to you. The celebration of nothing had to end. Drugs from friends and hugs from fiends. Jukebox jabberwocky, Greyhounds, cocksuckers, and the bliss of bourbon. Thumping strobe-pulsed discos. Dance floor spotlights appear like multi-hued laser-blades slicing through crowds of gyrating gym-bunnies in throbbing day-after hindsight. The pounding moment in dawn finally came when you remembered every dream that never gained purchase in reality. How could dreams when you could not? Remembering old fiction resounded like a subdued chorus That had never truly soared Birds perch for only so long before they have to fly And dreams, they search for only so long Before they have to die. Later, after dozens of meetings, I guess you’d grown as tired of being all-dry As you had at being wet. I hadn’t seen you since we did the 12-step tango you’d fallen away from crumbling conviction and jellyfish support from the nebbish power from your make-shift High. When I’d asked about your reasons For jumping back into the old pit of vipers You spoke barely coherently to me In a mephitic murmur Something about being tired of struggling, You couldn’t fight nature, You’d accepted that this was yours. I watched as a fog rolled in heavily as we spoke. You’ve said before in group meetings That you’d lived in the land of Psychotropia Since you were “this low”. You’ve always struggled to cure the cutting, Quiet the noise that threatened to destroy. The clanging banging mental melee Within a maniacal mosaic mind Every shot you’ve taken vaccinated against the virus That eats at us all And this was your personal way of doping. Wash down this manna to quell your madness soothe the sadness To glean some gladness from The swirling torrid tornado abyss Synapses firing should not make such irritating audible sounds But your mind is a brainstorm And as bright blue skies doomed to dark purple, This rain shall come down to drown. Nebulas in your eyes 80 proof wafting from your sighs As it’s well known, anything can be justified Even murder. Or suicide. Where’s the harm in dropping the world for a while anyway, Eh, Atlas? Your shoulder muscles are aching And the tremens in your hands is a quiet quaking. Perhaps you’ll opt to stay here where it’s familiar and just round off the remainder of life and what is life anyway? What the hell does sobriety mean If you’re clean but always intoxicated with temptation? There’s a dichotomy in being mired down by elation. Who knows anything? Perhaps you’ll reawaken in a few thousand days And return to requiems and reprisals the admission of denial And the wisdom to know the difference.It's longer than most of my other poetry. I tried to keep it interesting in the description of an alcoholic friend who was a drunken party-boy, then got sober and went to AA, then fell hard off the wagon. He is 30 years old. Does the poem make sense? Written October 18th, 2001 © on Oct 28 2001 08:43 AM PST   17 • 0 • 10