The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: sober

  • Come, eschew the myth

    Come, eschew the myth
    of Dionysus,
    the cafe with jazz aged
    aperitif,
    give me ice cream
    to stimulate my spirits,
    and a parlour guitar,
    not bitter liqueur,
    for my digestif.

    Yes, let Bacchus
    and his buddies
    revel with the devil,
    give me chocolate
    raspberry swirl.

    Don’t say, “Out of peaches
    ‘n cream, try a frosty
    fruity pilsner.”
    Ok, bait and switch,
    if you can add a scoop,
    please, and make it float.

    The evening passes slowly
    amidst dark cans clatched
    down the dry alley where
    sleeps Suzy with Sobrius.

  • In the Sober Reality of Celestial Shade

    Day ends with a walk to sleep,
    ends again in the sober reality
    of celestial shade, one awakes
    in the dark and quiet, too early
    to get out of bed, too late
    to start some new episode
    on the television or telephone,
    and this is when one turns
    to paper and words seep
    out shy and uncertain fearful
    like little furry animals searching
    the brambles for food and drink
    day’s fire now cool ashen,
    and while certainly somewhere
    in the city of night madness
    drones on, an asocial tinnitus,
    here in the paper we find
    we can hear the pencil’s breeze
    and feel the bluish-gray lead lighten.