November 25, 2007

went to three meetings yesterday
and after the third, decided it would be
a fabulous idea
to go out to dinner
with a bunch of alcoholics
like myself.

I still find that I
get stuck on that phrase…
like myself; like me:
an alcoholic.

ended up really enjoying the night…
found myself laughing
and carrying on a REAL conversation,
uninterrupted by “ohhh my god, I am like…
so fucking wasted.”

but when the conversation drifted
to literature, novels, poetry…
I wondered if I was going to really
be okay with all of it.

down the table from me, I heard
‘bukowski’ splashed in amid
the chatter, and I jumped, eager
to find something else I could
relate to with these people.


but I don’t think I really wanted to hear
what he had to say… ‘cause it simply
rang too true for me.

he’d given up on hank chinaski,
had found that after awhile, he just didn’t
care anymore. it was a part of his old life,
while his new one… simply wasn’t interested in
drunken stupors or the life-realizations
other fictional men found at
the bottom of their bottle…

no, he honestly didn’t WANT
to read it anymore…
not when every single day
he listened to real men and women
who found entirely different epiphanies
at the end of their own
inebriated ropes.


I told myself that would come for me, too.

eventually, I wouldn’t crave buk either,
wouldn’t miss the bleak glamour of his writing…



but when he went on to tell me
how he used to get hammered
and write clichéd poetry--
sitting alone in his basement,
satisfied with his vodka, scribbling out
the madness in his brain--
and that it had all stopped now…

I held back tears.



‘cause I’m not sure
I’m ready to give that up.