Why am you drunk

Wrote this when I was drunk! And it's about being drunk! and it's NOT THAT GOOD OF A POEM!

There I go again
drunk enough to say what's on my mind.
A monkey in a man's body
taught tricks by television and trauma.

"Be human."
"Be a man."
"Be a man and go kick someone’s a*s!"
Yeah? Is that what wins hearts?
Flex, fight, and f**k?
Be a strong-muscle meat machine,
grunting slogans and grinding girls?

...That wasn’t funny.
Not even in jest.
Girls need a tender hand, after all.
Or better yet a world without that hand raised at all.

Am I live or am I just another glitch in the program?
("Insert witty deflection here.")

I’m sick of me.
Sick of strutting out my soul
like some bad actor in a never-ending talent show.
Sick of thinking I can sweat poetry from booze.
Stop that,
You don’t need to be funny.

If I were a real poet,
the world would already know my name.
Wouldn’t it?

The Beat poets dragged me
kicking and screaming into alleyways
I never imagined existed
booze, needles, neon sins in sepia tones.
My twelve-year-old mind blinked at the shadows…
and maybe, just maybe,
I found my name scribbled in one of them.

(clears throat to read eulogy)

And so in our minds and in our hearts,
the archetype of Downing remains
sitting in the back of the room,
talking to himself,
making goofy faces,
and setting his papers on fire.

We may never know where this strange spirit came from
or where it’s going next.
And maybe we don’t need to.
What matters is what he did in this life:
sat in the back of the room,
talked to himself,
made goofy faces,
and set his papers on fire.

So Asa Downing, we commit you to the sea.
Cigarette to ashes.
Bowl to dust.
Laughter to echo.
And ink to stain.

Author's Note

Ignore spelling.
My portfolio can be found at asadowning.com