Sober but for angels
Friendless but for angels,
the old drunk knows
sober’s nothing to brag about.
His eyes stare
like the bottoms
of shot glasses.
The world is not a glad hand
of Cutty Sark,
tomorrow
no longer a swig
inducing a snarl
or a one-hour high
bludgeoned by the snark.
Friendless but for angels,
gone the bottle pickets,
the circus and the séance,
illusionists in a bottle.
He arranges yellow leaves
on a grate by a yellow curb,
he makes a paper ship
and launches it in sewers.
He wanted to get in,
to drink his way in
the wood, the bone, the glass,
to back-slap and shoot craps
only to find himself in
the company of angels
in the backrooms of his mind.
His camera is his friend,
in their communion
they worship rotting sills,
dandelions, loosestrife and thistle,
broken windows,
heaved-up graves.
Dry forty years,
drunk as he was born, he is
sober but for angels.
Poem by Djelloul Marbrook From the collection, Singing in the O on Not Leaky Boot Press, 2019.
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