Whiskey Sonnets

-Sometimes, when you are drowning in whiskey, you feel like writing poetry. Sometimes you write sonnets.-

                        .I.
The velvet curtain slowly pulled apart,
reveals a heap both pitiful and meek.
And whelmed within you see in dirty dark
two amber eyes among the filthy reek.

Not poverty that slays the man, but vice;
vice bitter, vice betray, and vice belays
the entrance underneath the makers eyes
to worship and to in his presence stay.

So cure me Lord, why don't you strike my doubt
for perfect sonnets never will atone
and if I'm made to suffer in this gout
then let me never suffer on my own

I'll fall against the grain in sinful pain
or see it carried out in rains of grace

                         .II.
The whiskey burns and smoke floats down my throat.
Sweet melancholic fire concedes to rise,
both West and South behind my quivering mouth
and back and forth behind my eyes.

But dost inebriance intrude too far
to squelch the murmer of the truly true,
oblivious ignore the fatal scar;
under no sun this foul weed it grew.

Let no drink grow too proud and tall
to smother what I've held as good and right,
no spark induce my lungs to fail,
no pleasure that my body will not fight.

Conceal every vice in temperance
and burn hellfire in my indolence.