...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV9OcYhk4CU

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Clink: In Heaven an Author Converses with Himself

And Recounts the Highlights 

   Of Their Life

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Ah memories - maybe 

They're meant 

Only ever

To lay dormant 

.

Before creeping to life

.

At night.

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Hmm but he was a drinker, then:

His office table

Set beside his bed,

Forever adorned 

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With tall, heavy glass -

Green -

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Wrapped tight

In a brand label - 

Beige and red -

      Jameson

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Not quite a dog, but 

Still

Good enough

To be a man's best friend.

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And he'd lean into the face

Of a cheap, Ikea desk - 

Beside cheap, Ikea furniture

And the acrid, looming billows

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Of an overflowing ashtray -

The strange, seductive solace

.

Of those two, little drags,

.

Left,

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In the smoldering cylinder

Of a half-finished cigarette.

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And even now, I romanticize it - 

Picturing pages of a manuscript;

I picture illustrious fingers

And a self-articulating pen.

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But all I remember

Are days defined

By wanting - obsession -

And nights that'd been spent

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So stooped over that table, that

Come morning, I'd hardly 

.

The balance left

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To stand.

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Oh but there was soul in it - 

Soul - 

It felt like heavy handed work.

.

And every line that would eek out

From the bleed onto those pages

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Had been wrung

Like drippings from a wash-cloth

Like blue-dye from a wet-shirt...

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Calligraphy from cloth,

A life-time compressed

Until it'd fit neatly,

Clean, 

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Into a few musical phrases 

And a page or two of verse. 

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Clink: In Heaven a Man Taps his Tumbler

Against a Tall Green Bottle

      and Says a Cheers

      to Their Health.

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