Let me read an older poem because many people seem
to like it, it's called The Drunken Man.
And it's a experience that we all have.
Your friend is drunk and you're not.
And there's no way to deal with him.
Everything you say is wrong.
He misinterprets.
He wants to start a fight.
It's everything is always wrong.
This is not about anybody in particular,
but just about all my-- although, it
sticks with one person.
It really is about every experience
when you have a drunken friend and you're not.
The drunken man.
There's nothing you can say to a man who drinks.
He rises in the gray mist of morning and lights
his cigarette knowing that soon he'll be elsewhere.
Out in the world, the old men sweep their shops,
and one barber nods.
The full breasted woman airing her pillows.
She smiles and squints and seeing it as only him,
she closes the window.
But it doesn't matter.
There's no way of hurting a man who drinks.
His wife floats in his pockets.
His father twists open the cap.
His mother whispers drink, drink.
He moves on down the street.
There are times when I feel obligated to speak,
I take my hands from my pockets.
I slide my glass away from him.
In earnest, I'll say something.
Anything, the weather, my son.
And he'll argue at me from someplace I can't
know because I'm not a drunk.
Perhaps, when I stagger home, my wife screams to shut up.
Come to bed like a man.
My flat, my face reddened my shoes drop.
I burrow into her flesh.
But a drunk is like a cloud.
It's like a ship that sinks, but never drowns
is like a feather bed.
Already it is noon.
His mother and his father are half gone.
He's weightless now.
Don't waste pity on a drunken man.
At night in the bar, I am his weakness, his hope,
and his family.
If I argue back, if I arm wrestle him,
if the bartender is embarrassed by my antics,
it's time to go home, go home, go home to my noisy wife.