EMPTY BOTTLE BLUES By Richard Collins

This house stifles me. The kitchen in particular 

is like the bottom of the sea.

    — Yannis Ritsos

I bring down a relic from last Thanksgiving

a shapely bottle of green Chartreuse;

only the bottle-green fumes are left.

Thanks, Eric, for that, that stroke of genius,

your only one and, unlike your suicide trick

with the pistol, repeatable. 

      That night’s refrain:

My life is so ridiculous, ridiculous…

Shut up! we shouted, like a Euripidean chorus,

though all in fun. Only monks and spermatozoa

have the right to be such flagellants.

Their golden green-and-white liqueurs

and softly rounded tonsures

license their penetrance and penitence. 

Eric the Boring, Eric the Red,

Eric the Bald, Eric the Dead,

only his bottle-green fumes are left.

It’s time to make a run to the bar.

Richard Collins drinks in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he enjoys the poetry of describing whiskeys, his current favorite being "dusty warehouse floor" (Nelson's Green Brier Sour Mash). He has lived in Cucamonga and Venice Beach, Bucharest and Baton Rouge, and for many years New Orleans. His recent poetry appears in Alien Buddha Zine, MockingHeart Review, Paper Dragon, and Shō Poetry Journal. His books include John Fante: A Literary Portrait (Guernica Editions) and No Fear Zen (Hohm Press). Claim to fame: presenting Merle Haggard with his honorary doctorate when he was dean at Cal State University in Bakersfield.