Junkie's Sonnet
In a drunken gaffe God blurted my fate.
To apologise, I was wasted for years.
Spittle epiphanies, plans inchoate,
a chloroform rag sopped in dark, stout beer
He gave me to suck. Happy was I, blue
& flapping with crazed oriflammes of cheer,
thin as a flicked dime, inhaling stars, glue
as viscid and yellow as pus. I feared
falling asleep alone; stoned firebrands
napped on my sheets. Fulgent & cavalier,
six lines blown, I decked hookers with cut hands,
romanced a red toilet. I am sincere!
I remember what God whispered, he said
I’d lick the rind of death ‘fore I were dead.
- David Merriman