An Alcoholic Albatross

Me? What a waste of time I turned out
to be, lazy, I troll for drinks, you'll
buy me one won't you of course?

Yeah? For your troubles I'll tell ya a story
but don't worry this isn't a cautionary tale,
just anecdotes to whittle off the time.

There were many great, great parties
like at the Kevorkian, 17th-&-10th-ave,
we'd drink till sunrise seeking the last man
standing. One night after splitting a bottle
of Jack three ways, we knew the bartender,
if you're serious you gotta know the bartender,
but after the Jack, Damien, a queer hooligan,
was suggesting we quote famous lines of dead
poetry, if the two of us don't know who said it,
we drink, if we do, Damien drinks.
Stella is all for it but it's gotta be
tequila, and don't let the lady name
fool ya, she was a tough bitch,
twice the drinker I ever was,
mean too, I don't know how many times she got
her hands stained on another yahoo's blood.

Well, to be democratic, we rolled a die
to see who goes first, dice
are an inexpendable necessity to have on hand,
and Stella, who was first to go, gives us
something about a slanted ray of light,
Emily Dickinson it turns out.

What bullshit, that first shot burned like shitting
in a Mexican prison and then I'm up, and they kept shouting
at me to hurry up already or take another,
mocking mocking mocking, I gave 'em an old bird-cat routine,
but Damien right off yells Bukowski and I demanded
a lime to get the second one down, and as I'm gasping
for breath something Spanish or Italian or French came pouring
out of Damien's oversized maw. Stella guessed Baudelaire,
but I looked at him straight into his gut, trying to stand still,
Rilke! No, T.S. Eliot, you believe it, that bastard wrote
entire poems in French and here Damien trots
it out like a prize-winning show-pony,
but I accepted my shot without thinking, and decided
it was time
for a break

to piss and smoke.

Outside, I still remember this clearly,
the rain had gone from drizzle to mist,
and all the other drunkards were out
clumsily rolling down the streets,
like pinballs scarred to knock anything too hard,
when one smelly bastard, swooning, grabbed hold
of me like I was his life jacket on the high seas.
I pulled him up, and as we're swaying a bit
he looked at me, I looked at him, and he kissed me,
a buoy smacking itself with its rusted bell.
Fuck him, I wanted to fall down a hole
and drown in my own crap.

When I had gotten back it had surely turned
into a shitstorm, those two had a private round and
she's arguing that he's gotta know the sonnet number,
since Shakespeare wrote so many god damn words,
but he tells her she wouldn't know it even if he did tell her
which got her wet 'n angry, funny it took a fag to get her horny.

After much shouting and a little shoving, good foreplay in my book,
they agree to each write the number down and check the net real quick.

I never seen her sorer, like she's been through anal,
but her 53 wasn't his 73, and those birds don't keep singing,
although I tell ya, I hear songbirds in Winter all the time.

We reroll and Damien's back up, Stella tells him English only,
and he just smiles with his sinister snake-lips, and goes
on and on - till we shout him down - about how we're eating whale
and that, if you believe it, was some Chinaman, writing in English.
I still remember (and not much else) the yellow filth of that shot going
down, ugh.

Oh
I tell ya, I must of vomited out my heart that night.