You’ll be getting some proper postings later today, but I have business to attend to first. Still, the poems have been well received, especially so abroad actually, and Lord knows there’s enough of them.
I wrote “Liar” and “Homicidal Etiquette” on the hood of my car in the Go Mart parking lot in Glasgow, WV in November 1999. If memory serves, that was a week or two after that first slam at the Empty Glass. If that’s correct, then I wrote those two verses and the two I wrote for that first slam, “Slamming at the Empty Glass” and “Keeping up with the Beckners” inside a two week span of time.
I was writing so much verse back then. I was just scratching it out and seeing what worked. That day was good evidence of that. Davy “The Forest Bard” and I had been down to Hurricane–that’s a city–where I did a few pieces before the opening of a small art gallery, and afterward we drove around Kanawha State Forest, stopping to check out that tree on Campsite 35 that inspired “Homicidal Etiquette.”
I left first and went up 60, and I was waiting for him to come through, not knowing that he’d gone up 61. I only waited a half an hour or so, but it was long enough to write those poems, which were both pretty much one draft affairs. I don’t even know if “Liar” has ever had one word or aspect of it changed.
A lot of that time was sad, but it’s all beautiful in my mind. This piece, unfortunately, details some of the sadness, the struggle of living life with an almost constant emotional hangover, walking the walk of shame pretty much all the time, seeing where I could get, but not comprehending how to give myself what I needed to get there.
Ultimately, I only needed the one thing, to put down the bottle. I needed other things too, but once I put down the bottle, the other things came easily enough.
It is my strong hope and prayer that if there is anyone out there facing similar issues you take something from this. When you ask yourself what you can do to better your situation, the answer might be as simple as “Put down the bottle.” If that proves more difficult than it is simple, go online and find someone who can help. If you’re still having problems, you can call me.
I love you, folks, and I hope, hope, hope that none of you is feeling like this today.
Take care of yourselves.
Liar
That’s it, I quit,
won’t do it no more.
How many times has a
cat said that?
How many times
was it true?
That’s it, I quit,
only to be found reaching
when the barkeep passes through.
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