Wednesday, May 20, 2015

it was a river Poe, not a lake


i stare into a liquor store, upscale

sales just a little bit more

a bottle in the window

a liquor i’ve never seen before

the label simply reads,

“laced with Lethe”

 

i purchase

i imbibe

the rivers of my mind empty

into an endless sea

and disappear

 

i can’t even remember why i drank

why i purchased

why i walked

why i wrote

 

i am not free

i am not fettered

i drank from a bottle

with lethal letters

 

midnight is the beginning of morning

i stumble into oblivion

and finally understand

the sin in is the synapses

and in the mercy of the gods

one of the five rivers was Lethe

where the inhabitants of Hades

could forget

 

i forge among the foliage of forgotten poems

replacing memories

like an amnesiac relearning the alphabet

and when i relearn me

i return to that liquor store

find they have more

linger by their door

with an open bottle

and fall in love

with the failure to remember

 

***

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