blood, scotch, and water - new writing from this morning

Burgos, Sunday, 11 February 2018

and when you pull the handle

open your door

step out onto the wet pavement in the slow rain

your destination has melted into the standing water

that slowly drifts to the curb

and flows over the curb

into the street into overflowing drains

but regardless of your lost destination

you run in the rain into the nearest bar

and sit at the old wooden worn L-shaped bar

and order a shot of hard brown liquor

in a green bottle from some Scottish isle

and poured neat into a highball glass

and knock it back quickly and quickly

order another and another and the rain soaks

through the skin that wraps your skull

and through the hard skull that shields your brains

and mixes with blood and scotch

art ensues and we all watch or read or listen

or observe and are delighted or disgusted

to realize that both reactions are the same

and that both reactions are intended

and by now you have been compensated

for the caress of your muse

the caress that burns and soothes

and sometimes drives you away

from the sanity that anchors you

in the dirt of the world that is not art