Descend drunkenness,
let your ocher curtains slip
over my eyelids and my lips,
veiling the suffering.
Seize my wrists in your palms
and lift me from the mud,
dust off my pant knee,
and salve my cuts in balm.
I am inebriate of sorrows,
and the lilt of my words
mimics the uneasy cadence of the breeze
in between the willows.
I am the bough sagging
under the weight of flowering buds.
I lie on a bed of autumn crocus
and harden into amber.
Descend drunkenness,
and entomb me all around--
burrow yourself into my sides--
and tincture my skin in brown.
I am the absinthe
and I am the alcoholic.
My skin is sallow green;
my eyes are bleary with tears.
The erasure of pain
leaves a quaint blankness
and a wreck to salvage,
but what a tonic!
