Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
~ Seneca

Poet Writer Albany NY
~ Seneca
IN THE BAR AT 2AM AT 50
“IT’S TOO DAMN BRIGHT IN HERE”
The drunk guy in the corner says
To which the bartender replies:
“Go Home” “It’s Late”
“You’ve Had Enough”
So you, hearing all this get up and turn your head and look around to catch a glimpse of the drunk guy causing all this commotion thinking that the wasted bastard is going to make some retort, retaliate or say something funny, so you wait for his witty banter or at least a decent comeback, but it never happens
And then?
Suddenly just as you’re about to leave you stop for a second and see him in the mirror
Looks like he’s leaving too.
When stars fall out of the sky and
all lights fade into silence.
When you grow cold
Eyes grow old
Touch grows cold
Stars fall out of the sky
And lights still fade.
After years
After hours
After moments
That never mattered
You grow cold
Love grows cold
Eyes grow old
And love fails..falls,
Fucked up and silent
Foolish and waiting
In the corner.
When the universe no longer
Yields to your commands
When the mirror finally breaks
And all you are left with is glass
You grow old
touch grows cold
eyes grow old
And all of the stars still
Fall out of the sky
It’s time for the last call.
_________________
~ R.M. ENGELHARDT
“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others.”
She’s gone.
Temporarily
Forever
Finding me
Here alone on the couch in
The middle of
Another Sunday afternoon
With my good friends
The Clan Macallan
& Warren Zevon
Reminiscing about all
Of the old days & all of
The best days past.
Yet, perhaps it’s all
Just an illusion
Or maybe it’s just the sounds
That bring us all back to
To the land of
Stark raving reality from
The momentary
And marked passing
Of punk poetry, slam dancing
And black leather jackets.
As Warren says to me
“Life Will Kill Ya”
And Macallan says to me
No worries my good son
“Drink up”
For she will soon
Return with
The love that you
Gave her
And your
Foolish, sentimental heart
In her pocket
“Too”
_______________
R.M. ENGELHARDT
From “The Resurrection Waltz”, 2013
“The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking waste-land where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance-abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I’ve heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. It doesn’t matter if you’re James Jones, John Cheever, or a stewbum snoozing in Penn Station; for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.”
~ Stephen King. “On Writing”