the whisky waterfall

he keeps hitting the bottle
and spitting his tales of a modern misfit
licking rizlas sticking them together
to make a page to write a better poem
than the one he wrote before
a notorious stanza scratched on the wall
of a tavern called the whisky waterfall
and he takes shots of scotch
between couplets that swiftly
slip into the realms of nonsense
constantly convincing himself
that the fictions he sells are well
worth the investment
giving each verse less assessment
eventually letting his pen get the better of him
betting his own essence on a poetic whim
he continues to scribble
until he found himself lost amongst
paradoxes and riddles
boxing concepts until left for dead
in the middle
of a ring of his own imagining
battered by grappling with complex
aspects of nonsense couplets
that come to him quicker
than liquor at the whisky waterfall
that famous old place
with the mad young poet's last masterpiece
now encased in glass on the wall
a testament to all those poor fools
who let their pens get the better of them
and descend into nonsense too

Hi Sampson, good to see you around. Shades of Kurt Weil here - The Next Whiskey Bar sprang to mind. Possible inspiration or serendipity? Either way the poem makes an impression. Thanks for sharing.

Live and be well - H

I also liked this very much once I got beyond that opening line - 'hitting the bottle' is a cliche that adds little to what is otherwise a well-observed poem.
Love the internalised alliteration of 'rizlas' and 'stanza'.

H

There is much to like about this one.

This is one of my preferred on the page, Sam! It flows so perfectly and offers such a feast of sounds and rhythms, all in subtleties. Great. Thanks for sharing!! and welcome back!

I love it. :D

Shouldn't 'until he found' be 'until he finds'? I like this also.

Thank you everyone for the positivity (: I'm enjoying being back on these forums very much!

hillwalker: I used the 'hitting the bottle' line to kick start the poem. I am primarily a spoken word artist, and often leave lines like that in there out of habit... It's a way to get into the flow at an open mic or whatever. But you know, I see what you mean when you say it adds little. It might be a little superfluous, but I'm still hesitant to remove it... What do you think?

Delta: Yes, that was a bit of a balls up! Sorry! And cheers (:

Hawkman: I don't know Kurt Weil. I'm going to look him up now!

What do I think?
Well - 'hitting the bottle' is a tired cliche and doesn't lead naturally to the 'spitting' in line 2.
If you tried to think of a more original expression that still conveys the same idea - something like 'sucking at the bottle' - you achieve two things for the price of one:
you avoid an overused phrase, and suggest there are contradictions in his behaviour - 'sucking' and 'spitting'.

H

Poetry speaks up something that goes unsaid and the depth with which it goes is beyond measure