wine

Monday’s Rune: Ardent Courage

 

Cheap, Quick, and Red

Liquor goes down easy
and fast
and way, way too easy
and too often takes folks
down ruin’s road.
So why do I?
Since it makes me so queasy.

And nobody loves a drunk
not even another drunk,
okay, maybe sometimes, maybe,
but not after they grow up
or get sober
and we or they make
such an unforgivable mess
and land in such an unrecoverable funk.

It’s best to drink beer—
after eating a full meal,
with dessert and coffee
late at night,
one beer or two might be all right
for you if you’re not
Irish or German,
but then—then what?
It’s gastronomically unclear.

Wine, it seems, might be finely biblical,
if it’s tannins
don’t give you headaches,
hives, or hallucinations and
if it’s warm, cheap, and red,
because white wine
tastes like fermented kerosene,
smells it too,
so we pretend it’s good.
My dearly departed friend,
Jack, held to the standard
that all Dutch courage
must be drinkable.

Good ideas are the worst
when you’re in your cups,
those delusional wonders,
which thankfully rarely occur
except in the tank
or the boot of the hearse.

Look both ways to find the source of the lie.
Mind the growing gaps as they turn memories eternally black.

A little Tom T with his famous beer song, may he rest in peace.

Monday’s Rune: Hank’s Wine Whine

Bukowski had six cats,
a horrific history,
(eventually) a (2nd) wife, a daughter,
and hated his father,
maybe mother too.
he smoked cigarettes
and drank wine
while writing poems
until the wee hours
while
listening
to classical music.

He drove an old VW bug
and was attractively
unattractive.

Playing the horses
was more than
a gambling vice,
it was an avocation.

You say so what?
I say, you don’t know?

Look both ways when you need a poem to post on a Monday.
Mind the gaps cuz yer on yer own dude.

Henry Charles Bukowski: a “laureate of American lowlife.” Time (magazine).

Poem: dVerse quadrille #108 (bramble)

The dVerse quadrille is a 44-word poem, excluding any title, using some form of the prompting word: Bramble. Click here for link to the party at the pub.

Small troops of proud pickers pounce
and probe with plastic cups and buckets seeking
drupelets of prey, searching brambles
to score secret sweet’n sour ingredients
plucked from aggressive blackberry tangles.

Juice-stained fingers hunt hearts of cobblers,
tarts, buckles, crisps, and jams.
Perchance, some wine?

 

The Springtime blackberry forest background.

Look both ways even when picking berries.
Mind the gaps,
we share all of this with more natural consumers.

Sammi’s weekender #158: downpour

I like beer and I like wine,
I like music, art, women, and raunchy poems
I like puppy dogs and kittens, and
I like friendly horses
and old goats like me.

I like to walk, and I like rain. No.
I love rain. The shattering thunder
of torrential bliss soaking my body
in orgasmo-epic proportions
of precipitating pleasure.

The French like to say, it’s like a pissing cow
as downpours of rain create life,
It’s like Bob Marley said,
“Some people feel the rain,
others just get wet.”

Look both ways and feel the rain, the music, and life.
Mind the gaps between drops. Breathe there.

Poetry: Maybe It’s Me

Chairs out behind the pump house,
the backs gone. They’d be about right
in a junk yard. A real find
when I was a kid—
for our club house.

Roofing tiles, black ones; a small
paint roller, slightly used, almost
worthless; long barbeque tongs—
dirty and slightly rusted; large
branch loppers with rusted
head blades; a ball and a dirty
red shop rag; pointless lawn art
(nice try) unfinished, broken, or
toppled over. All placed
helter-skelter and neglected.

Signs of good intentions;
orbs, artful things; lights
that come on at night; a small
one inch plastic skull;

wildflowers of the
post bluebonnet variety,
pretty yellows, reds, pinks,
some with brown eyes in yellow
bonnet-like petals; pine cones
on the ground among the needles.

I’m in a pleasant and lovely—
if very neglected, garden
of my family—

sitting at a plastic picnic bench
with bird shit, some dirt and
a roofing nail, slightly rusted;
I’m where mule ear prickly cactus
grows among mesquite trees
and bushes, thirsty pines or
some variety of xeriscape trees.

A green ornamental frog, fat,
a foot tall and lying back against a tree,
its foot or flipper broken, kind of a
chunky Buddha sort of frog,
neither smiling nor frowning.

Several cats, one dog; weights cuz
strong men live here with her,
the artist who doesn’t do much
art anymore. I don’t know why.

Vacant seats around empty tables
that the cats think are theirs. Lots
of green now with many
colored wildflowers that will
not last—it’s Spring in west
Texas—a tough country
even for horses, cows, dung
beetles, and snakes.

And for people. And
for flowers when it’s hot,
lucky cuz right now it’s not.

Took a break but
I’m back with wine, reading
psycho poems by crazy
poets (and sipping red wine
after I fish all the bugs out)
who delivered some mighty fine
poetry in verses that hurt.

The wind blows a bit of an
easy cool Texas Zepher. Some
long black chimes are hesitantly
singing with chirping birds,
who seem to be bitching
at something—

Maybe it’s the cats.
Maybe it’s me and the wine.

Look all around when in doubt, look both ways, cuz poetry is all about.
Mind gaps lest you step on a frog, a cat, or a big mean dog.

 

Z – Zymurgy Blessings (NaPoWriMo #30)

Zymurgy (zy-mur-gy; zī mәr jē) is chemistry that deals with the fermentation processes (as in wine making or brewing), There are zymurgy clubs around America, a brew pub called Zymurgy in Torrance, CA, and even a magazine called Zymurgy. It’s a fancy word for something we didn’t know we had a fancy word for. In words like this, experts, specialists, and aficionados find each other.

 

 ***

A toast to the Grog
By Bill Reynolds

Hold your drink high as we all salute,
Stand proud and tall as you toast our success.
Long we have toiled to blog the last dribble,
To the craft of zymurgy, my final tribute.

To the blessings of grog from the art of the craft,
I brought you my twaddle, the sweet and the daft,
With creative support of that spirited guest,
I sent you my poems, the poor and the best.

From the wine to the beer,
The ferment and brew,
The stout and the red
Went straight to my head.

My thanks to my readers,
Both critics and lovers,
And for the crafters of zymurgy to brew,
Grateful to all, I am thanking you too.

***

Wine to the left, beer on the right,
Look both ways and have a great night.
Of the gaps be mindful, it’s been so delightful.