The Grog, Part 2

                    Why I Drink Red Wine

I have several possible roads to oblivion

available to me at the end of each workday –

or day of sitting around waiting for work,

composing bagatelles such as this one,

reading mysteries, and playing computer solitaire.

I have no access to sufficiently potent opium derivatives

to achieve the objective,

and I doubt if I could afford them if I did.

Sometimes I buy whisky, but relying on it

to achieve the objective

tends to produce annoying side-effects

the next day.

I often have beer in the fridge,

but just to go with certain kinds of food –

drinking more than two or three beers makes me feel bloated,

and the kinds of beer that I like cost too much.

Anyway, as one of the most accomplished drinkers

who ever wrote brilliantly

once told me, wine provides the most bang for the buck.

Since I occupy the price-sensitive segment of the market,

I buy whatever varietal is cheapest that week at the Pak’n Save,

and I discovered long ago that cheap red wine

tends to be more drinkable, to my taste, than cheap white.

                       My Churchkey

I’ve had it since I was in high school,

a plain steel can-and-bottle-opener of the old type:

one end angled down and sharply pointed

to open the archaic steel pre-pop-top beer cans

that were all we had back then,

and at the other end a flat hook

ideal for opening beer bottles.

The logos of some long-ago beer brands

decorate the 7-cm handle between these functional ends.

Beer occupied a large part of my consciousness

when I was in high school.

We called these things ‘churchkeys’

and I call my treasured relic the same.

Kiwis, of course, prefer to open beer bottles,

the ones without twist-off caps,

using a Bic lighter

or something similar.

My friend always declines my offer

of the use of my sacred churchkey,

because he likes his Bic lighter more.

I try not to let this hurt my feelings.

      Oh, Cheap Wine

Oh, cheap wine, caress me!

No one else wants to.

Oh, cheap wine, comfort me

when the waking nightmares

of my minority torture me.

No one else wants to.

Oh, cheap wine, make love to me!

Make my mind and body

relaxed enough for sleep.

No one else wants to.

  Sympathy, Reassurance, and Support

I ain’t too well-wrapped,

that’s no secret,

and sometimes when I encounter

the mental-disorder triggers

that profusely litter both my environment

and the endless crannies of my brain,

my mind careers out of control

taking me to terrifying ports of call

where sniggering tormentors thrash my being

with pain and emptiness and unbearable

self-loathing.

At these times I disgust myself

both for craving and for having no access to

sympathy, reassurance, and support

– comfort is beyond my comprehension –

as I know nobody to whom I could turn

for that sort of stuff.

The last time I tried,

before composing this,

I received in response

a snarling rebuke

and accusations of harassment.

Alcohol helps,

of course,

but it’s been requiring

increasingly large quantities

to take me to the point

at which the agony

relents.

                         Raw Suffering

After having had enough of work,

I’d finished some fusion-cuisine tacos –

using frozen chapattis

instead of those cardboard supermarket tortillas –

and a bottle of cheap plonk,

and taken the fox terrier for a walk using the longer route,

but when we returned it was still ninety minutes before time

to leave home and walk to a performance.

On my standard day it would’ve been time

to tuck into my second bottle of plonk,

pick up my novel du jour,

put the abstract music that I had

in the five-CD server on Shuffle,

and drift off into oblivion,

but no –

I had to be sober enough to perform

in two hours time

and somehow make it through that non-working,

non-preparing-or-eating-food,

non-walking interval

in moderately full possession of my faculties.

I switched on the music,

took a wee slug of the plonk,

and then spent the ninety minutes trying to read

over two mugs of café au lait.

It was ninety minutes of raw suffering.

            Published Guidelines

I have from time to time in my life

– well, more often than not, actually –

consumed far more alcohol

on both a daily and a weekly basis

than published guidelines consider

to be the threshold of safety

and therefore hazardous to my health and well-being.

And yet here I am,

an elderly person well past the retirement age

still drinking too fucking much,

and not dead yet.

      Stupidity When Blotto

I can’t stand the loneliness,

and since I managed

to understand

and acknowledge

the nature of its reality,

and gave up expecting

or, more to the point,

striving for anything else,

I’ve been drinking myself blotto

after work each day

until I can sleep.

One corollary of this

is that almost every evening

I stumble about the house

for I don’t know how long

in a dazed condition

doing things I don’t remember.

No surprise, then,

that I frequently fuck up

and do stupid shit

or clumsy shit

that renders me bemused

when I see its evidence

or consequences

in the morning.

          Vini Collóquiis

out of bed before midnight

unable to sleep –

gone downstairs

when midnight passed

and tucked into

a bottle of cheap merlot.

supporting my head in both hands,

elbows on the table –

my head

my human head

the head of a member of a species

too abominable to contemplate –

a species

so fucked up

that it makes me feel ashamed

to be human –

I’m in hell I’m in hell I’m in hell –

but the music

from my obsolete midi-system

is sublime –

How could our species create this?

    Sustained Effort

Self-destructiveness

is such a waste of my time

if I’m not

gonna stay at it.

I’ll drink to that!