How Did It Get This Bad?

Paul Christiansen

Whiskey tastes like police sirens
but that’s better than silence.
If there’s one take-away from this pandemic,
it’s that facemasks hide 11 am alcohol on the breath.
Most mornings my fingers shake 
like seismography needles,
but the scientists in my head
refute the readings, deny an earthquake: 
it’s simply the subway rumbling past
their low-rent, ramshackle laboratory.
Finding the right words often means
dipping the tip of my plastic ladle tongue
into a bucket of chum;
scooping and scattering that savage scrum
of guts, scales, fins and torn heads.
I’m sorry I blacked out again.
I didn’t blackout. I simply snipped the string
tethering my helium balloon brain.
It floated above a darkened jungle 
where a remote tribe misidentified it
as a god abandoning civilization.
How did it get this bad? 
Water to ice cube isn’t instantaneous
and it doesn’t reverse that way either. 
I drink my rice wine warm from the plastic bottle now.
I can’t bear to watch anything else melt.