Monday, October 25, 2010

A Toast of Blue


                                A Toast of Blue


Twist off
                                and lick the under-
                                side of the cap,
                                mixing the metal taste
                                with the bleeding insincerity
inside your mouth.
                       
Set the bottle down
                                and find that Skip James album
                                you tend to play in the dark.
                                Begin with his voice –
                                that wild, howling scream –
                                and sink in the rhythm
                                of the guitar or piano
                                or his feet pounding the floor.
                                Sip with each lurch
                                of your soul.

Lift the liquid to a drop
                                on your tongue then read
                                the label four times in tune
                                and place it back,
                                clinking the table with its
                                glass serenade breaking you.
                       
Your head slumps
                                chin to table,
                                you view the top
                                through tinted refractions,
                                overturned in its disgrace,
                                its humbled example.

                                To finish the drink
                                your eyes repair
their known motion,
                                aiming the tilting
of the empty
from stomach to mind,
from mind to mouth,
from mouth to glass.
                       

                                And in this present
                                the ancient sounds slow
                                allowing these words,
                                in this place,
                                on this fault,
                                to cry myself true.

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