Hitting The Bottle Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Another night,
And I am taking it upon myself again
To steal those things which aren’t real,
Postulating on my silent houses
I haven’t moved into,
Avant-garde Jewish neighborhoods
Where my certain dysfunctions aren’t any longer
In the majority,
Where everyone can spell better than me,
And I am certain to find a lover truer than the beaten
Heart I now wear soldered into my chest
Like a watch that has stopped working;

And I do this instead of doing anything which
Might be considered productive:
I lie on this piss stained bed as the little dog whines
In little colorless dreams his four legs abound through,
And I salivate over far distant mermaids
And the cleated avenues I might leap with stewardesses
Serving me drinks to get to her:
But I don’t do it—There is cheap rum in the
Drawer, and I should get to that before my next
Poem,
Should get to that before I ever again begin a new
Novel, a newer sunrise trying to caress my sad brow which
Will not have it,
Will not know again the light of an undeniable illusion,
The very same light that she lie down with her to kiss
The world all over her,
While she goes into the suddenly whimsical hibernations she
Is right to have,
And into dreams fully locked with a man so handsome and rightly
Hers, that I should not justly described him
Even after I hit the bottle.