Whisky Elegy

~ qbit 
Reader, now you are fully here in the poem.
This is how the poem, you, and I 
transcend illusion, maya.

Tell us how outside your window rain beats a can –
the one you left on the porch of hair mixed with coffee grounds
swept from the kitchen floor last spring.

And I will admit my mother was already lost
as we drove from warehouse to warehouse in Denver
looking for heroes and boxes of steel ball bearings.

The poem tells us these are where we hide,
our thoughts tangled in umbilical, helical ropes
that hang our hats or our heads.

I am a large man, if I try to wear your clothes
they will burst. If you try to see yourself in my mirror
you will be unshaven and want a clean bar of soap.

There is no "chop wood, carry water" here, only 
an apartment in Weekhawken above parking lots
filled with brown leaves, thin puddles.

Let us break bread together then,
raise our glasses without deception – utterance 
and burning promise in our throats.

The Sunday Muse

26 thoughts on “Whisky Elegy”

  1. Life is a” Maya” as said in the Bhagwat Gita! You have touched a simple fact of life so beautifully. If only we could understand this phase of transition!

    The poem tells us these are where we hide,
    our thoughts tangled in umbilical, helical ropes
    that hang our hats or our heads…. What superb lines!!!

    Liked by 2 people

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  3. Searching warehouses in search of heroes and steel ball bearings! Things to do on Denver when you’re dead? This entire poem is a funhouse mirror of things one might not want to wish to be or do, and now we’re back to Maya. “It’s Circular,” said the hopeless square.

    I noticed that sly “K” worked into “Weehawken.” Weekly rates? “Striking out” for the hinterlands?

    As you often do, you pull together the allusions at the end with an emotional twist. Bravo.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. Illusion is a rich theme, since it pervades so much of this plane, yet by its very nature it wiggles away from the light fairly easily. What is every brick of poetry–simile, metaphor–but an illusion seen through the poet’s warped/gifted eye? I love the images in this, the idea of bursting another’s clothes, of the porch, the fruitless yet eternal search for the inconsequential and the transcendental as well–my favorite line is perhaps “..The poem tells us these are where we hide,” because of course, it does. Enjoyed this, qbit.

    Liked by 1 person

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