A Kind of Drinking Song

The celebrants of Friday scotch, men of lesser deeds
Spent time like pocket change in endless café-bars
Made noise enough to wake the quick and dead:
There was light drizzle on a cherry blossom way,
The six of us, smashed, but more high on ourselves
As most young men will be when booze is abused,
When Dwight, a good natured poet, began shouting,
“So what’s art from no-Nukes if your Ego-jerking girl
Leaves you for easy game, empty-handed in the café
Street fights in the rain!” (You had to be there.)
Then continued as thunder slammed the sky…

“It’s the leaven of the mind to know for every stance
A different man while pissing on the earth; how best
In these times, to get between the legs of truth and
Have a fucking field day, my friends, especially when
Language, words, speak mostly to nothing new now
And the dull edge of the age digs us all a deeper grave!
But look, the moon falls to fullness, suns round the sky
For no purpose but to burn, wisdom in my mind recalls
A semi-conscious boyhood, and above the mountains
As if to mock my fury, that belt of morning thunder

Makes us all wiser fools…”

We had to carry him two blocks to his place after that.
There seemed some weight in what he said, so I kept it.

 

Poem by Rayn Roberts– Kyoto, Japan 1982