An old drunken poetaster trips over words

Leaving dazed patrons wondering what they just heard;

Meretriciously staggering on booted legs,

He makes way to built-in taps on cold barrel kegs

In dark place he has carefully hidden from view

To conceal his surreptitious, sweet-burning brew

Born slowly of purifying distillation,

And at times of agitating fermentation.

He tends to his volatile spirits in secret

Occasionally restocking his cellaret,

Awaiting visit from flamboyant flapper-muse

Who might roar in to tend her own flammable booze

Concocted of intoxicating elixir

That makes edges of his imagination blur

And upon which he has come to wholly depend

For showy verses that are spangled and sequined.

He reaches for words held high in delirium

In that place where he loses equilibrium,

Dancing round hand-in-hand with the incorporeal

Searching mute crowds for the rhyming and lyrical,

But no thought lies behind their stupefied faces

And no Chambord liqueur is served in these places,

So he falls to hard floor as just an empty flask

Still unable to fulfill poet’s only task.

© 2008