My Brother Told Me

If you want to be good at something when you’re drunk, learn how to do it when you’re drunk. This he says as he explains the appeal of combining beer and golf. I nod my head, thinking maybe I would be as passionate and patient a poet as my brother is at golf if I had only waited to write my first lines and stanzas alongside an emptied flask, stumbling feet, and spinning head. To my misfortune, I first wrote poetry with the sober hand of a child—sober, yet worry-free, relaxed, and curious. This same inspiration now only comes to my ragged, grown hands once I’ve freed my mind and filled my gullet with word inducing wine. Trying to fool my fingers into typing without my liquid muse causes nothing but a blinking cursor and treacherous boredom. Pouring into myself and out of myself in the midst of selfish inebriation turns me into Dickinson—pale and mysterious, until I read my ramblings over a cup of hangover the next morning and see Bukowski—old and dirty, looking back at me from the page. I want to glide in white, but instead, I’m swinging for a hole in one.

Chorus of Elixirs

Gin whistles.

Whiskey moans.

Wine sighs.

Tequila squeaks.

Vodka rings.

Champagne chirps.

Brandy lullabies.

Spirits who so generously vocalize

Rim to lip to ear,

Yet I never hear from beer.

Hangover Man

Retinas peer out like a crack in my eyelids

following a long morning on a good time's third rail—

the hangover.

Lack of energy points out a cat resting on my toes.

Stomach feels like a tribe of gibbons screeching and scratching.

My relationship with myself lies at the bottom of the bucket

that sits six inches below where my throat and I

last had a serious falling out.

Once again, it's time for wild gestures and speeches.

I will never, I repeat, never behave like that again.

No more yards of beer hung like a participle above my head.

I have to realize it's not my job to entertain the audience.

I'll take it easy next time. Sip quietly in a corner.

Remember what I said and who I said it to.

What I did and who I did it to

won't even come into it.

Sadly, resolutions have such a short shelf life.

Soon enough, Friday night will emerge from the weeklong work grave

and drag this vagabond to the nearest den of bonhomie and drunken bravado.

For when healing's on tap, I just have to take my medicine.

Where else in life does the sickness come after the cure?