We
once only dreamt to drink,
and
now we drink only to dream.
With
our limbs longer,
our
livers lessened...
we
have become bottles ourselves,
just
waiting to be thrown out to sea.
With
love letters written in our stomachs,
they
burn like a tomorrows sun...
and
our liners are much too weak
to
hold all of these memories,
all of
this pain.
They
are much too weak
to
last until we find a shore,
until
we find what we were
always searching
for
at the
bottom of that bottle.
They say that most of the great writers in history
all had drinking or drug problems…
“Write drunk. Edit sober” – Ernest Hemingway
Although this may or may not hold any truth, you
can choose to believe whatever you’d like. But before truly deciding whether
you agree with this claim or not, I think you should just sit back and attempt
to truly define what the term “Problem” really means. When the word problem
gets dropped in any context, from any aspect, or when it leaves anyone’s
tongue, it can hold a different meaning every time. Is a problem really a
problem if it’s only a man’s muse? Is a problem really a bad thing, if it
created the greatest memories? Is a problem really what it’s defined to be, if
every problem we have ever had made us who we are today. What is a problem if
we still are alive, if we still get to breathe?
There was once a time when we were much younger
than we are now, and there were places where my friends and I would go to get
drunk on so many of those beautiful summer nights. There is an endless list of different places
where we would go drink at, but I think I might lose your attention if I was to
mention them all, so I am going to focus on just one. This place is an
elementary school that backed up to one of my friends houses, a place where we
would set up a tent within in its soccer fields, a place not far from the
backdoor of his house, but just far enough to say that we felt its freedom.
There is no need for names of where exactly I am talking about, or who I was
with, but I need to explain to you why…
Yeah, we may have been a rowdy bunch-a-kids, but
our carelessness back then has made us stronger today. We weren’t old enough to
drink, hell; we weren’t even old enough to claim we knew what 10th
grade felt like, but get over that and hear me out! Any night that we had the
chance, we would tent-it-up just beyond my buddy’s backyard, and one of us
would make that call to the older kid to have them drop off some cheap beers or
a bottle by the woods. Back then, we could get drunk off an amount of alcohol that
today, could barely Listerine my breath. But it was never about the amount, it
was never about how much we drank, it was about getting drunk so we could lie
in the grass and watch the stars until we didn’t have to think anymore. It was
about friendship, brotherhood, love, and at the time, it was what it took to
open our chests to one another. It became a burn that has now defined us far
beyond our bodies.
We drank in the fields behind this school for
years, summer after summer, night after night, shooting star after shooting
star. We would hang on the playground or swing on the swings and just talk
about life together, about what it meant to love someone, about what it meant
to be a man, about our families and our friends, about the future and the past,
about our scars and our bleeding cuts. Slurring our words, eyes reddened,
tongue and teeth free of judgment and care, we talked about everything on those
nights. It was the first couple sips of a bottle that felt like a beehive
filled with razor-blades, but it’s the sips we take today that feel like
tomorrows knives do not matter, and yesterdays cuts have bled dry.
We are much older now, and backyards and playground
have turned to bar-stools and top shelves. But the stars still hang above, and
our conversations haven’t changed much. We still talk about everything, whether
we are sober or drunk off our asses, we still are here for each other, and always
will be. Yeah, it’s true; we definitely drink too much, but is it a problem is
the question? The answer is No! I look at it as a solution, but not only for my
depressions, but for my everythings’. Sometimes we turn to the bottle
when things are going wrong, but sometimes we swig it in a celebratory fashion,
and sometimes we drink just to remember those nights, those nights when we were
younger, hands gripped around monkey bars or the chains of swings. Sometimes we
drink because we want to fade away from this hellish world we were forced into,
sometimes we drink ‘cause we love too much, sometimes we drink just to fuckin’
drink, and sometimes we drink just to remember what it once meant to live
carelessly, with naïve eyes, and crooked smiles.
I have written poems drunk, and I have written
poems sober… they are much different. Without claiming one or the other to be
better, I’ve bled from both angles of the pen. So, as far as the word “Problem”
goes, the only problem I have is with people judging something without
understanding it. Why don’t you just sit back, take a swig of the bottle
beneath the night sky, think about life and think about death, then fall asleep
and dream, and hope you get the glory of waking up to once again breathe. This
life is much too short…
I have
lived,
and
will continue too.
Memories
held close,
written
in messages
at the
bottom of
shared
bottles.
Memories
of times
when
we were free,
and
some when
we were
not…
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