Cheers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Out again in the high altitude of this
Self imposed prohibition:
There is nothing saintly about my sober condition,
I’ve just been trying to save more money for
My neurosis,
Wondering in the red eyed daze of dry and thirsty
Liquors, the spirits I inhale with the airing of
Her season’s show, out in the spores and
Floating motes high up in the anemic mountains,
Far away from any touch she might on a whim
Encroach into me, and thus awaken the flow of
Blood and search of eyes through the bones and
Body of my ghost town;
And let again spirituality build up along the shores
Of this mortal river, and I will give up
Putting off my hobby as if it were a chore,
As if this here line was difficult algebra,
As if I had a profession and a housewife to play
Scrabble with, and to lounge near the chlorine
Pool of her disinfected eyes,
And never say another world like this, and her likewise:
To stretch all out as if in one long day,
And breathe out children and exhale my grave,
But eventually I’ll sneak down into the valley and at
The supermarket buy 750 ml of $10 rum,
Because even the cheap stuff can put the hair of the
Dog on my tongue, and that will let out a poem
Or two moaning from the circuitous doors of
My wounded tomb, allowing for a few hours to
Dance alone with you in my high altitude room,
Knowing even though that it will not get me buried
In West Minster Abbey, in between Percy and Mary,
Nor will it unimpose your coffee eyes from me,
The flirting organs that swim like lighthouses through
My sober sea.