The Voice of Reason

...is what should have intervened when my hand started to pour another drink. Yes, folks, it's 16 minutes past midnight on what is now a drunken Monday morning. It starts so innocently...as always, I suppose...with due consternation as to the expiry date of a carton of fruit juice. 'Oh no,' I had thought, glancing from the box to the calendar, the calendar back to the box, 'this pineapple juice goes off this month!' Dilemma - solved easily by the application of reason from my mighty human brain. 'I know! I shall consume it by means of my mighty human oesophagus!' But then hero's problem begins to complicate. My brow furrowed. 'But as a youthful, happening sort of person it would be foolish, nay, laughable to sit in on a lazy Sunday evening drinking pineapple juice just to be reasonable. And since I am compelled to drink this pineapple juice whilst holding true and faithful to my evening's plans of not going out, I shall have to hit upon exitement - in beverage form!' That's when I noticed the rum, schnapps and vodka - white, peach and Value respectively. (And, may I just point out, it was bloody lovely.)

So, hours later, bottles emptier, head achier, chores forgotten...ier... here I recline (ahem, sprawl) trying to ascertain whether I'm about to ruin my credibility by introducing this next poem with drunken ramblings. The voice of reason...says I'm only increasing my credibility as a real person. And that I should introduce this next poem as one last older poem for now - on the merits of knowledge v passion. So I'll leave you to the poem, which will be vaguely more coherent than I am right now, and end by saying that I hope you've enjoyed this drunken blogging, and that even if you haven't I win, since I'm now chock full of Vitamin C. Thank you, and goodnight!

The Voice of Reason

I

Yesterday, I was sobered.

Apparently I sin in every word I write

(And, I suppose, I say)

When I could be so much better informed.

He said, “There’s always more to be done.”

He was young, confident; he made sense

But I would not hear.

As he spoke the air thickened, stank,

Stuck hope to him like honey;

Wiping expectations from his face

He tore rotting stars from vaults

And washed old bones in the dappled lamplight.

And I watched him, from some place

Where potatoes are just a side dish

And thunder says what it means –

I watched with stricken heart

As he showed me that the pen could never have its day;

Told me to read and read

In order to assimilate great minds

And learn to lose my own.

II

This android dreams…

Of having a say. Oh, one can learn,

But every minute lived is seconds changed

And I’ll never be as good as I will tomorrow.

Let’s draw the line, lay down the tome a moment

To grasp at life, instigate wild spasms,

The pen dancing as if minutes from death,

Cellophane-wrapping the perishable flesh

Just aching to go sour.

In every minute born a different self

That knows, that’s slipped, that is in no way better –

For every truth hard gained, I’ve lost sweet lies.

Who knows, I may live out my days

Some burnt-out carcinogen echoing glory,

But for now I’ll be more than content to shoot

And hope to see inky integrity festering,

Dark words smouldering in some white tissue,

An infection to bleed new verve into the darkening water –

This android screams in a pretty kind of delirium…

Reboot from start.

III

The New Year, a lack of resolution,

Where dreams are wires that spit and snarl

My overloaded mind. Slovenly, marooned, comatose,                   

I crave certainty, spent passion,

Whilst computers crash beneath my hands and waves play on the shore.

Venus’ arms could hold all my strength now.

Fleeing sunken depths of eyes, my thoughts are spurred;

I wonder if they’ll judge me

Some self-indulgent child with no mystique.

No blood in this deliverance, just pus;

I lance the boil of feeling with my pen.

Beauty’s rarely truth, words both and neither,

Just mediums to lie/confess before a stranger’s jury.               

The page is severed, crumpled to the pale mass grave

And, finally undone, I’m lost to blushing depths of hands,

Suffocate in scoured palms; I drown oceans.

But with no hope and just a pen

Somewhat reluctantly

I’ll live, and rend my heart and paper,

And wonder if it is enough.