Tears in my Wine by George Gad Economou

with some much needed peace of mind, staring out at the 

sea—the same sea ancient Athenians sailed on to conquer

and understand the world.

a carafe of cheap white wine on the table, a cigarette dangles

from my lips. a deep drag—a good gulp. the soft breeze

blows and the tears in my wine are not for a woman, for a change.

I look to my left, then to my right. uninspired faces, dull

conversations. sitting alone and I’ve learned no friends are needed.

no company but of those that once were, that once knew and felt

the same things. 

the tears are for the great drunks of antiquity, the brilliant writers

that we hardly know of. Timocreon’s drinking ballads, 

the plays that won prizes and we don’t even know their names,

nor their playwrights. imagine the knowledge lost; who decided

who to survive history? was Euripides truly tragedy’s master

or a cunning bastard that eviscerated his rivals’ memory for 

posthumous fame? 

we’ll never know.

the wine withholds no true answers; it’s only for a moment 

I feel part of a symposium. the air whispers, nuggets of true wisdom 

are carried in the particles, traversing time and space.

then, they’re drowned by insipid real-time discussions all around me.

the ancient drunks had to weaken their wine with water; if they had

our variations, they’d drink us under the table without missing a beat 

in their world-changing philosophizing. Socrates was said to be

a hardcore drunkard, going batshit crazy on occasion—it’s to him,

and Plato, 

we owe what we have. we just prefer to ignore that without 

ancient hard wine Socrates might have been

nothing but

a farmer in Athens’ outskirts.

with wine (that made Thunderbird seem like Chardonnay)

Aristophanes wrote some of the most brilliant pieces of satire. and,

who knows,

there might have been comics even better than him, lost in history and in time.

I order another carafe—and fire up another rolled-up cigarette.

nothing else makes sense; we’ve lost it all. we’ve lost

philosophy,

literature,

our fucking minds.

Currently residing in Greece, George Gad Economou holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and supports his writing by doing freelance jobs whenever he can get them. Has published a novella, Letters to S. (Storylandia) and a poetry collection, Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds (Adelaide Books). His drunken words have appeared in various literary magazines and outlets, such as Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Fixator Press, Piker’s Press, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.