Spilling the Beans
The other night or five or ten ago,
I heard the raspy-voiced, world-weary Tom Waits
Submitting to an interview about his album Real Gone,
Dropping a bomb on my heading-home-to-a-poem head,
By stating the matter-of-fact raison d'être
For his entire career's oeuvre,
When he answered a question, as candidly as he could,
Regarding how he keeps writing songs:
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
Just then, after he gave that disturbing answer,
I was absolutely certain, to my very artistic core,
That I understood what it is that makes me what I am.
How can I tell you?
How do I put it into the fewest words possible?
Were my life to be missing its bottomless bottle of wine,
There'd be no lines of free-verse poetry
Exploding from my every pore, morning, noon, and night,
And without the poetry, I don't know if I'd still be breathing.
In all honesty, if I couldn't write, word-chime, versify,
I'm certain I'd have submitted, long ago,
To an icepick behind my eye, into my frontal lobes.
OK. So I spill the beans, sheepishly confess
That inebriation is the key to my creativity.
Although each new poem may be one big rip-roaring drunk,
It's still the only place I call home, for that moment,
The home I carry on my back, that day or night,
To keep from losing the timeless location of my soul.
08/14/08 - (2)
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