Anarchy and Alcohol
Beautiful as the trembling of the hands in alcoholism–Lautréamont.

The anarchists meant well with their bohemia of random
beds to overthrow the street with bleary salons;

they traded out intelligentsia’s overcomplicated semantics
of art and revolution for aimless debauchery,

with “situations” played out as rebellious dérive
omens for drunken smudge of pen, accidental euphorias

slurring art breaks down topographically, in rooms
of verbs staggering past nouns blurry text redactions,

blackout mapmaking through underground clubs
loitering colonial lanes named in privilege syntax,

coercion property/situations/bender squats
on imperial sites, dull mind’s edge on sham rites.

you feel less edgy when your rebellion digs
ruts stocked with state tonics, inebriation owns

your mental grottoes, menages worldpain into well-worn
roads to tremens where despondence has already set in.

The Renal Perspective of Sport

Toasts made to the pastime of playing
through fog while double fisting
through the lengthy innings
are straight from the euphemistic
playbook for bottoms up

Verily, the liver burns out,
sunk under table,
soon gets benched
and chopped from the team

—some just can’t
hold their liquor—

So the liver detoxes
from the double-speech,
gets up from the dirt,
brushes off its knees,
gives the middle finger
to beer gut coach
and pancreatic gallery;
renounces the sport
called the American Dream

High Hell

if the cosmos were a sandwich
the upper reaches of hell
would be the condiment
on the lower slice
the meat of our realm
ever close enough
to kneel down and knock
on the floor or play
tin can telephone
to demons in the planks

you mean well to connect
your yogic golden rope
to earth but really
your spine is a metaphor
for underground echelons
mapped by Dante
in lesser evils ascending
from the big bads
holding court with
molten devils of deep
upward to your garden-variety
life coaches and
real estate agents