One of those madly drunken nights
where I am the one consumed,
and the bottom of the glass
is somewhere at the top of the next…

I wake up in a room,
naked and dying,
only to flee back into the darkness of sleep
and it’s painless, consoling embrace.
Where I drink a lake of water from the fridge,
and guzzle painkillers between pissing, shitting and retching
in the small Cambodian bathroom.
Where I finally ascend around five p.m
to scrape myself together
and plunge the river of memory
to try and find last night.

Last night,
where I could have almost certainly died,
and am none the wiser.
Where breasts haunted my desire
and my cock was as much a whore
as any of that name.

Last night,
where I ate without chewing,
and drank without swallowing,
Where I held down the night
and made love to life in the street.
Where I exhumed my old ghost
from the wells and barrels of every bar
that bid me enter, and begged me leave.
Where I breathed smoke and stripped flesh
from my cage on each exhalation.
Where my tongue shone silver in the moonlight
and had to be gagged by sleep.
Where the sun hid from me
lest I rip it from the skies breast
and smash it with the edge of my hand;

Until the sun sought me out
behind the curtains of a deathly bliss
and whispered the hour in my ear.
And so naked I rose from the bed,
and naked I shaved and washed,
and then naked I dressed,
until clothed I was fed,
and in the fading light that is left,
I know that I will have to drink to be reborn,
and speak nothing of my regrets.

Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Benjamin W. Wild © copyright 2008
ALUC(i)NA.