A and D

Like most other decent Americans
I'd grown up on it
but at a young and dumb eighteen
when I went away to college--
the real kind, not these plumbing classes--
I stopped drinking it altogether
in exchange for whiskey sours.

After the quiet homecoming it was something
else, aside from myself, to be rediscovered.
It took me awhile, but I did. Both.

In fact, my hiatus from its indulgence
made it seem far more appealing:
by the gallon, by the quart
by the way this ain't a metaphor.

The catch, and there's always a catch
was that my absence brought about
a digestive intolerance. Anything more
than a-glass-and-a-half with my nightly
chocolate made me pay the price
the next morning.

I just flushed the last installment.
In five years, almost to the date
I still haven't learned.

The point, and there's rarely a point
is that milk and other pleasures
don't necessarily
do a body good.

Though even while lining up a fly
and crooning to a sleeping auditorium
I wear that mustache with my stubborn pride
that not even four bottles of Tylenol could stop.



Currently reading:
"Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3" by Charles Bukowski.