But Honey, This One's Eating My Popcorn

First of all, let me explain.

I found this poem the other day while cleaning put a closet, in the process of clearing out the place in advance of some home improvements. At the time of the writing, admittedly, I wasn't what you'd call a tee-tottler, hardly absentious, but that isn't what this is about.

At the time, the trendy thing was getting clean. Sobriety was the new catch-phrase, and there was a virtual revolving chorus of authors who were following book tours and talk-show spots with arrests for DUI and crash landings at rehab centers. So that's kind of what this is about.

SOBRIETY

Sobriety is out to get me.
Sobriety wants to eat me alive.
Sobriety wants to make my brain dead fuzz,
To gnaw through my chest to the back of my soul.

Sobriety needs to hear my pain
Creaking like a dead house in the wind.
Sobriety wants to live in me
Like a dead house
And re-arrange my furniture.

Sobriety wants to crush the nut of my heart,
Wants to call pain love
Wants to call death sanity.
Sobriety clutches the back of my neck
Listening as my voice dies in a high wind
Watching the light die in my eyes.

Sobriety sits on my chest at dawn
Grins at me as I awaken
And asks “Are you ready?”

Sobriety is out to get me.
Sobriety wants to eat me alive.