Going back to Alcoholism 
has never felt so appealing


Strongly suggest against this
the psychiatrist tells me over
the phone—Dr. Singh

Her calmly composed voice
with a mild Indian accent—
first she ever called me
upon requesting psychiatric 
help from the obese receptionist
behind the counter of my local GP,
with a stamped bored look
on her wide face I have only 
ever seen on bulldogs—
for an instance as I walking 
through a windy street 
plugging my left ear hole 
with my index finger, I thought
Dr. Singh was a scammer

Now, living in an apartment 
two months behind rent and looking
outside my window to such dark clouds
that seem like exhaust fumes
of old power plants-possibly soviet made,
Dr. Singh wants to stop me 
from quitting my meds 
cold turkey as I have done in the past
and barely survived to tell the tale.

I’ll prescribe a lower dose, she says 
and you’re going to taper off it gradually.
Dr. Singh wants to protect
my brain’s addled chemistry
or maybe she wants to protect her job
because one time in the past
while on mirtazapine I told her 
that I had violent thoughts
that could potentially become actions.

Okay, alright I tell her
but my insomnia is at an all times worst
I don’t remember the last time I slept—
I think it was Wednesday.

She agrees to prescribe zopiclone.
Months of effort this,
to persuade a prescription of sedatives
so that I smile over the phone.

That’ll work, I tell her.

I light a cigarette and half smoking it
I try to half assedly clean some of the 
debris that became my apartment 
after a whole month of crippling depression

I line up all the beers cans 
and grab a black bin bag
and I drag a chair close to them
and I sit on it and start to crash 
each can before chucking it into the bag

all the while reminiscing of teenage years
and my clear predisposition to melancholy 
wondering how did nobody see the signs
wondering how did I not see them either—
me who back then was the most conceited
brat of all.

I notice all the wine bottles gathered 
at a corner of my living room and all
the dirty laundry left and right 
and I just stop doing anything at all
and I just lean back on my chair
with my arms hanging next to either
side of my torso and my neck back
on the chair looking at my ceiling
seeing through the burning ambers
in my skull,memories of a blonde kid
who was once me— fading in form,
disappearing into the scorched earth
of the past.

My father always telling me
back then, be happy, why can’t 
you just be fucking happy?
Open your eyes, life’s beautiful!

Life’s all the adjectives but fair
you old fool, I tell my ceiling 
and stand up and after quite possibly
a decade, I start to iron my pants.

My father really liked women I think
ironing slowly, maybe that’s what he meant
with open your eyes. Life’s beautiful.

Maybe it was all for the human pussy,
a suspicion I’ve had since I was twelve,
so I book an hour with a local prostitute
and after shaving and bathing myself 
like a proper gentleman—
a strong rain comes down 
and a strong wind starts blowing—
the nemesis of my patience.

Forty minutes of walking in the rain
and the wind with a small umbrella
that snapped backwards with each gust
that I had to fix again and again
as I contemplated suicide 
or murder suicide.

At the prostitute’s place 
she of course looks nothing
like her photos, closely to a decade
older and out of pity for this catfish
I agree to stay for half an hour.

The sex as terrible as predicted.
Don’t do this, don’t do that.
Hurts my throat to go that far.
I wanna tell her I’m slowly dying 
just by being here with her.
A vagina sizeably vertical—
a vagina that’s birthed at least four.

Outside her apartment I book 
another prostitute, definite in my attempt
to test my father’s notion that life’s
beautiful. That I should open my eyes.

My eyes did open wide 
as the second prostitute’s
tits were big enough to stifle one,
to snatch the soul right out his body.

I spend all my money on that damn 
lustful grip of those tits— a grip
that loosened three hours later 
and going home at dawn
holding my broken umbrella in my hand
I wondered if it was truly a kids toy 
there in the corner of her bedroom
and possibly a child or two sleeping 
in the next room.

I’ve seen so many group of homeless
men laughing with each other
that I have felt jealousy in the realest sense.

I drop Dr. Sigh’s tablets down the toilet
one by one deciding that in a few hours 
I’ll go the chemist to get some tablets
that them too I’ll drop, one by one,
in the toilet, thinking that my old man
was full of shit about a lot of thing

but not for pussy.