After Drink
One golden ale could ravel the day, unwind her shoulders, mute her internal megaphone. She selects the cerveza named sun and wishes for him to seduce the night’s into going with him into her empty stomach.
She can’t help but smile into her glass and then out into the gloaming to no one in particular.
After drink, she’s full and lighter and heavier and hungry and still in her own country, alone.
Get Drunk
–Charles Baudelaire
Always be drunk.
That’s it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time’s horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
“Time to get drunk!
Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!”
- Take a “martyred slave of time” and intoxicate her with something.
