More robust drinking please
for these aren’t peanuts on the floor
but train tracks.
Soon enough the express roars through.
Soon enough a limb is severed,
skull crushed, a dumb sot sliced in two.

But who cares when the gin is running
and the whiskey’s up to our eyeballs
and the beer rattles our heads
like tenpins, until most tumble,
a few totter and think that they’re still standing.

The train has to go through here.
We’re in the way of its shortest distance.
But what can’t be adequately mourned
must surely be celebrated.
So drink to family or work or God.
Toasts the heavens or hell,
the last daybreak, the very first dusk.

Sure it’s a long comfy train
and there’s people riding it.
But the club-car’s dry.
So who wants to go where it’s going?