Friday, June 23, 2023

Daze of the Week by Peter A. Witt

I never drink on Tuesdays,
that's when I brush the dangling
hair off my shaggy dog,
pull weeds in the garden,
write emails to my lost loves.

On Wednesdays I recover,
by nursing a fifth of vodka
while watching endless Seinfeld reruns,
my life is pretty much like Jerry's,
pointless, privileged, and  absurd.

On Thursdays, I dabble
in the poetic arts, finding rhyme
where none exists, ruining meter
both iambic and hexameter.

By Friday, I'm ready to socialize
with the Bukowski wannabees
at Jakes, a place where
no one can remember your
name after nine p.m.

Saturday is for laundry,
mainly dirty, sometimes ironic,
often humorless, maybe iconic,
nonetheless success is
hanging sheets in the wind
until they're dried out.

Sunday I repent, with my dog,
gusto, watching the doomsday
preachers talk of hell and
the evils of drink, after which
I mourn losing my sobriety
at sixteen to a sixpack wielding
pothead who was twice my age.

Monday is the day I trundle
into work, tell my boss she's
the reason I drink, which
she insists on discussing
over a two martini lunch,
which invariably I pay for.

So that's it, a seven day
routine, with all its trimmings,
nothing left out except the
occasional AA meetings,
and my wife yelling at me
something about remembering
to put out the trash.




Peter A. Witt is a Texas poet, avid birder/photographer, and researcher/writer of family history. He started writing poetry after 42 years as a university professor as a way of recapturing my storytelling and creative writing abilities, skills he'd lost in the stultifying world of academic writing. His work has appeared in several online poetry publications including Rye Whiskey Review, Fleas on the Dog, Open Skies Quarterly, and Active Muse.



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