Vodka dreams
Bittersweet pleasures
Tranquil waking slumber
Sipped spiked tea.
How unlike me
To partake thus.
The world is a shadow
Which melts before me
As I sit absorbed in waking dreams.
How easy it is to forget
Everything.
I sit and stare
Down the length of a straw
Which bends below the surface
Of my pale drink.
Dim awareness
As the liquid slowly
Vanishes, consumed by an indifferent mouth.
Slowly I depart.
Unhurried, in leisure,
I depart.
To the land where the street people go,
The only realm in which they may find happiness.
Oblivion.
No past, no future,
The time is now.
It is just now I feel,
For isn't it a given truth
That only now is real?
I am not who I was before
Nor will I be tomorrow,
But I am he,
The now in me
With fading awareness
But still aware of Now.
I was not made for drunken verse.
My muse cannot prosper in wine.
But yet I shall experiment
In this most strange of times.
Do not expect such lofty words
To creep from my liquored brain,
But catch if you will
The groove in which I am:
Momentarily insane.
I pray that Ralph and Earl won't catch me
Kneeling at the throne.
I feel my stomach telling me
To stop if I wish to hold
That Toppers I devoured today
While watching the Flying Dutchman
For the second time.
Night
Is slowly coming,
Catching up with me at last.
It's nearly midnight,
And I'm still drinking vodka'd tea.
My mind is far drunker than my body;
I walk with ease.
But give it time,
Time, time,
Then night will yet claim these.
My drinking is nigh done,
For Lord Stomach bids me cease
To torment it so.
A half-shot of Rumplemintz,
Then off to ne'er ne'er land
I go.
It's strange the way the mind
Lives in symbiosis with the body.
Sometimes
The body seems so unreal,
So like a stranger's,
A mass of flesh and bone
Dancing in an endless dream,
Feeling only illusions,
Shadows of an outer world,
For only within the folds of the mind
Does a world exist.
And now my world is vanishing.
I'm alone, and I feel the world vanishing
Like an empty dream,
A false phantasmagoria,
Disappearing,
And I wake
To nothing.
I must awake tomorrow,
Tomorrow to considerations of the future,
Homework and far-reaching plans.
But tonight I shall sink
Into nothing.
To die tonight,
For a night,
Then to surface tomorrow.
Then I'll worry
But not until then.
The wind howls outside,
I hear but cannot believe
The vision I cannot perceive.
Almost ready,
Yes, nearly ready.
Don't ask me of tomorrow.
I can't see that far.
I only hear voices,
Voices in the midnight air,
Muttering nonsense,
Questioning reality.
Sludge,
Sludge in my brain,
Guiding my sluggish hand in feeble motions
Drawing me deep into the womb,
The death before rebirth.
I shall sleep soon.
Scribbling junk for the morning's
Derisive eyes.
The scribblings of a madman
Consumed by fluid fancies
And sinking into stupor.
12:33 and still awake,
But how much longer?
Alcohol roiling in my tummy
Like a cauldron of boiling lard.
I shall not wake early tomorrow
From my vodka dreaming.
Black fantasies of nothing,
No-one and nothing
Shall constitute this night.
The bars will close soon.
I laugh and laugh.
Who needs the fucking bars?
Who gives a bloody crap?
Everything I need is here,
Here in my lonely domain.
Everything here,
Here to entertain.
A world is alive
Within my head.
This world shall remain
Until I'm dead.
No longer awake,
I dream,
And my consciousness
Ebbing like a stream.
Words flow in stupid succession.
Thoughts roll in fruitless progression.
I shall sleep soon.
I shall sleep very soon.
I am alone.
In this world
Only I exist.
But not for much longer;
Soon I'll away
To the kingdom of night
To perish again.
But mourn me not,
Thou sensitive man,
For I'll arise tomorrow
As the Phoenix before me
To struggle once more with life's trials.
Vodka dreams,
Night beckons.
Cannot resist it much longer
Must sink into the slumber
Until the morning calls...
George Chadderdon © 1993