Wine (Part X)

Recent drinks have tumbled through me and left me with hardly a memory that they once inhabited my body. Therefore: no psychosomatic placebo-effect-type amplification of euphoria, no loosening of bonds, no renewed ability to talk to musicians or free the intellectual teeth of the mind for another night of metaphysical scratching posts. Therefore: a fully conscious yet somehow incomplete representation of heavy rain on the streets, xylophones in cracked basements or angry crate-loaders found only in the back alleys of overcrowded markets. Therefore: the mind continues to wax analytical and keeps straining up to see the stars but it is overcast, was overcast yesterday, was overcast all month which made the brown tree branches black in some fiendish contrast, at least by my overworked rods. Therefore: the same geometric chord progression on the same guitar, twangs in the same place where the finger partially presses on the string, calluses falling to soft skin from disuse, same finger-picked progression bounding off the brown crud in front of the picture window not shaking down the horrible fire escape. No raccoons were coming to hang in front of our door, no flocks of sparrows to brighten up the dark browns with slightly brighter browns, no laughing jocks from the recenely refurbished neighbourhood bar. No clowns and trapeze artists in the backyard. No driving dance beats to bring down the eyesore of a shed in our backyard which we had such high hopes for. No inspiration from the French-language reading section in the library and no descent into adventure, no nadir from mediatio and you better believe no apotheosis. Such hopes are painfully 18th-century. If there was no wine did we at least have coocktails? No. Beers? No. Tequila? I wish. Whose voice am I speaking in? What am I lamenting? Was this a poem or was it prose? Both? Neither?

Consider: "Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success."