Monday, November 17, 2008

Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: The Failure of Alcohol

Oh, go on. You know you love it.

Alcohol is a sadly inadequate drug.
The destruction that it brings
Is far out of proportion to its meager gifts.

It has nothing of the majesty
And distraction of LSD,
Which has no calories,
And leaves behind no destruction
At all, but only misunderstood insight.
Or, even better, mushrooms,
Which deliver something similar
Without the tightness in the throat,
Or the vaguely technological sense of menace.
Both are predictable to the minute,
And back to school or work tomorrow
With a clear head and no dyspepsia.

Alcohol is an aperitif, and a good one,
But standing alone it is
An inconstant friend of limited utility.
Alcohol is available, and socially acceptable,
Those are its chief advantages.

Marijuana, what a mystery
Its rejection by super-ego second-guessers.
Practically free, it should be,
And easy on the throat, and the heart.
Smoke it daily for twenty or thirty years
And the first one of the day still gets you off,
Skip a day and nothing happens at all.
Coffee is much more addictive,
Although, I admit, coffee has its attractions.

Thanks are due to researchers
Who have provided medical practitioners
With new drugs that can enthrall their patients,
And that, applied with professional care,
Will ensure years of further billing.
I would not recommend that anyone
Take Xanax every day, as recommended,
That’s a fool’s game,
But on a fifteen hour plane trip,
After a meal and a few drinks,
Even better, watch a movie first too,
Three or four Xanax and it’s lights out,
Sitting upright with no regard,
Sleeping like a baby in his crib.

Overindulgence in alcohol on a plane
Only brings frequent, clumsy trips to the bathroom.

The worst indictment of all:
Alcohol, in a solitary existence,
Brings only exacerbated bouts of crying,
And limits one’s ability
To read serious literature
Or solve chess problems.


November 13, 2008

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Diuretics cha cha cha