My Spirits: 1st poem revision
Leave me alone to my spirits.
Redistilled white grain,
breath of blue juniper berry,
tonic, pine, and lemon tango amidst
alcoholic bitter drives along narrow
sweet streets filled with frozen clarity.
My throat fizzes and bubbles escape
through nose and intoxicating giggles.
Luke, please make me another.
dancing, chattering, stumbling
amidst people, other people,
transformed blurs of pink,
brown, red, blue, black.
Stop. Slow down. I mean it.
If the stool would quit staggering,
slurring words, and brace
itself, I’d sit upon it.
cracked and grimy fingernails,
sandpaper knuckles and
bloated muscles grasp me
and put me in my stool.
I rub pinkened eyes,
turn the lens and focus.
Almost, almost. Perfect.
Wastepaper wrinkles
behind ash tone skin.
I don’t know you.
He fingers my hair, I cringe.
He smells of pirate rum
and whiskey. Bad, cheap, half
rotted whiskey stank seeps
through yellowed denture teeth.
He asks questions I can’t hear;
his voice the low burmbbrumbbrum
of a tractor, unintelligible
and tangled in pumping base
and singing glasses at the bar.
Leave me alone to my spirits.
Redistilled white grain,
breath of blue juniper berry,
tonic, pine, and lemon tango amidst
alcoholic bitter drives along narrow
sweet streets filled with frozen clarity.
My throat fizzes and bubbles escape
through nose and intoxicating giggles.
Luke, please make me another.
dancing, chattering, stumbling
amidst people, other people,
transformed blurs of pink,
brown, red, blue, black.
Stop. Slow down. I mean it.
If the stool would quit staggering,
slurring words, and brace
itself, I’d sit upon it.
cracked and grimy fingernails,
sandpaper knuckles and
bloated muscles grasp me
and put me in my stool.
I rub pinkened eyes,
turn the lens and focus.
Almost, almost. Perfect.
Wastepaper wrinkles
behind ash tone skin.
I don’t know you.
He fingers my hair, I cringe.
He smells of pirate rum
and whiskey. Bad, cheap, half
rotted whiskey stank seeps
through yellowed denture teeth.
He asks questions I can’t hear;
his voice the low burmbbrumbbrum
of a tractor, unintelligible
and tangled in pumping base
and singing glasses at the bar.
Leave me alone to my spirits.