Drunk in the rain at 2am. By Dennis Moriarty

I have walked a lifetime in an hour through

the rain and I am whiskey soaked

and sodden, half cut and talking to myself

as if I am an audience of thousands

listening to my words for the very first time.

A preacher poet delivering

the gospel according to Jack Daniel's, lurching

between thoughts, stumbling 

over metaphors and slurred words on my

twisted lips.

An owl interrupts me, a nocturnal heckler 

shouting me down, 

challenging my anti establishment rhetoric,

calling me out for the drunk that I am.

I answer him back will ill chosen humour and 

crude banter, with a sneer and a snarl.

I continue to talk to myself, to a dwindling audience

of the owl and I,

the rain pounds the street, jack hammering a hole

in the pavement into which I fall,

desperately clutching Jack Daniel's close to 

my chest.

Tail spinning, nose diving like a wounded bird,

down into the darkness,

caught in the endless echo of oblivion that 

regurgitates my words, 

my confusion, over and over again.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.

In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.