Silenus
1
Heavy with beer
Weighing my belly
Shackles my feet
Into dragging stumble.
Makes me reach
For the open arms of gravity
Who’ll hug me
Close as a friend
Pavement prone
My journey’s end
In glutted slumber.
2
Last light or first?
Impossible to say
But someone’s necking the dregs
Of the jug (your privilege, once)
And someone else
Is bold enough
To flick a butterfly tongue
Out at your woman – at least, I think she is
Your woman – she holds your hand and holds you up
Braced beneath your armpit. She could
Be your nurse. Anyway
You are oblivious
Saint drunk, martyr paralytic.
You were always the last man standing –
Minesweeping the kitchen at dawn, searching
For dry cigarettes;
Or keks half-mast in the street, pissing
Like a god, roaring
Jokes and obscenities. I loved you like this.
Now your flesh is slack as a balloon
A month after the party ended
And heavy as a landed fish
And they bear you like a cross
Leer at each other
Over your head. And look
For somewhere quiet to stash you
Where you’ll be safe
And cause no embarrassment.
Bubbling slurred prophecies
From slack lips
To congeal in your beard.
3
And stumbling through the drunken dawn
With undone flies, singing random songs:
Happy he who was not born;
Or having been, who quickly dies
Offending the labourer’s daylight
With bloodshot eyes, with doubled sight:
Happy he who was not born;
Or having been, who quickly dies
Silenus! Chucked out of everywhere –
Every pub, in the market square
Your slack and shambling form derides
The buyer’s greed, the vendor’s lies:
Happy he who was not born;
Or having been, who quickly dies
