I know that the night
Brings you down
On your knife,
But it’s all right—
Darling it’s no crime.
Better yourself,
Know that got lost
You shalt,
But it’s all good—
Darling it’s no crime.
—Hands In the Garden
You don’t know if you are drinking from it, or it’s somehow drinking you.
Those forgettable lagers that often hide behind the veil of attractive bottles and labels—you must have been an idiot to have romanticized how tastefully the condensation would the gather round and shroud, in fine tiny droplets, the once transparent glass bottle, painting it the hue of chilled, perspiring opaque.
A perfectly bland beverage. You might as well be drinking the bottle itself.
.
.
.
She never quite liked your much mediated habit of drinking. But something tells you that, if you had used all your might to stop, to render yourself free from all substances, in the process, you’d truly become a bad man. A man too clean, too pent up, and not to be trusted.
Then again, there are times when you would contrarily catch, in the strange mirror, glimpses of your beloved father: a great, compassionate, and massively intellectual man: an addict, with no self discipline. Such instances cause you dire cravings to rip off your inherited skin, and become square—just to remind yourself that you are your own man.
Perhaps, it’s this oxymoronic rift in all things, even behind the act of downing a few useless beers, that makes it worthwhile to wake up to another day.
Turn your love way up inside
I know you like to hide away
Keep your head down, sleep the day away
You’re left in such a state
Keeps me so inclined
Just you turn your love way up inside
Now we got back, darling, don’t you wanna know
A little too soon, still a little bit soft
If I could make that bond, we could get to the bottom
It’s just you turn your love way up inside
Yeah, there’s always something
Oh, to making it true
I used to, baby
I don’t feel the strongest singing my own songs
And I used to, baby
Now that I forgot all those things I’ve been forgetting
Now that I said all those things I needed saying
I will come back, I won’t mind
It’s just you turn your love way up inside
To making it true, making it true
Like I used to, baby
There was always something
Oh, to making it true
I used to, baby
I don’t feel the strongest singing my own songs
After great pain, a formal feeling comes–
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs;
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round–
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought,
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone–
This is the Hour of Lead–
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow–
First–Chill–then Stupor, then the letting go.
—After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes, Emily Dickinson.