The Hangover

I don’t remember much from last night

Just flashes of letters

And phrases

Inscrutable in my mind

“Sounds of the universe”

“Sung by the ladybug who was my friend”

“And your mother who stopped loving you”

“Fell in flocks that freckled the evergreen tree”

I woke confused

Dazed

Throbbing

“There was nothing else here to see”

Dehydrated

Burning

Sweaty

“Won’t you stay please for me?”

With a headache

“She left”

“I mistook in her a false sublime”

“But the girl still sought beauty”

“By loneliness he was raped”

What had happened

These flashing pixels of memory mourn to me

“Through the labors of our sleep we held on”

“Without the consolation of seeing the same sky”

My mind was blank

As I walked to the kitchen

To drink a lukewarm glass of water

It tasted good

Washing over my psyche

Like vodka over a wound

“He challenged God”

I drank another glass

And another

And stared at the even birds

Stabbing my silence

At the fragile brimstone

Remnants of my words

“His poem drowned in a thawing pond”

My head rung enough

To bring me to tears

And to my knees

“An aftershock of love”

“Of creativity”

That happens

I went back to bed

And sunk

So I could write tonight

Once again