They say too much booze can kill you
Yeah well so can not enough .
I'm fast drinking and slow thinking,
Why the hell can’t I pick up?
You sure you won’t come home with me?
I promise I won’t throw up.
Yeah sure, too much booze will kill you
But then so will not enough.
Well I kicked that drinking habit
but the goddamn thing kicked back.
You see, my love has gone away
And they won’t be coming back.
Without you I'm drinking for two
Someone must pick up the slack.
Yeah I kicked the drinking habit
Then that fucker it kicked back.
I'm at my best after three drinks
At my worst just after four.
Hey, where do you think you’re going?
Come on, sit down, have one more.
There’s nothing on TV tonight
And no one is keeping score.
I'm at my best after three beers
At my worst just after four.
And I wish that I could love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
Now, you're call me a poseur
Coz you know that I can't fight.
Well my favourite pose is standing
But that’s harder late at night.
And you know I'd love to love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
And too much booze will kill you.
But not tonight, it won’t
Not tonight.
Posted for Sean Hughes.
* * *
Yes, I know. That thing is sort of a poem, only it has a very basic rhyming structure that surely no poem does, not these days. Not that I know much about poetry. And it is sort of a set of song lyrics, only not set to music or with a chorus or probably many other things.
It is really intended as spoken word and I wrote about 15 years ago, when I first started to listen to a lot of Tom Waits, which is probably obvious as it is more or less something I think I imagined delivered by a Waits-esque character circa-1976's alcohol-soaked Small Change.
Though I wro it so long ago and barely think about it, or the small number of other lyrical-type things I've bothered to write, I've been thinking it about since Irish comic Sean Hughes died of cirrhosis of the liver aged just 51.
Coz that the is obvious irony in that poem/song/thing, of course. Too much booze does kill you, maybe not tonight but some night, like October 16, 2017, in a hospital having a cardiac arrest while getting treated for liver disease, if you are Sean Hughes.
And I am aware I am writing about this on a blog called "An Alcoholic's Guide to Modern Life" with a tag line "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are drink". I guess I just fucking love irony.
One thing about Sean Hughes was he also wrote poetry, like in a way I would never really dream of doing. Serious poetry, like the now-widely reported on poem "Death" that featured in 1993's Sean's Book.
I don't know almost anything about poetry, so I can't judge it, but some of it seemed alright to me, some seemed pretentious, but I don't really know. Sean Hughes could be quite earnest when he wanted.
It is not that I haven't published a lot of poetry in my time, right here on this blog! But, with titles like "I KILL YOU NOW FUCK OFF AND GET ME A DRINK", this stuff is really too genius to even mention among poetry in general. Like it operates on a whole other level of brilliance that is beyond mere mortals (such as the Nobel Prize for Literature judges who keep ignoring me).
I am generally not interested in mortal poetry, even my own. Fuck, especially my own. the rare times I try to write it seriously, I do my hardest to seek to forget the fact.
But in honour of Sean Hughes, I will do something I have never done — and post here something poetry-related that I wrote seriously. Feel free to go to his funeral and heckle him about this point.
I will also note a piece Sean Hughes wrote a couple of years before his death on alcohol. He had quit drinking, then started up again.
The piece, entitled The fine line between drinks and 'proper' drinks, discusses the tragedy of alcohol in society, especially Irish society. Particularly noticeable is the suggestion he makes that his friends welcomed his return to drink as "the old Sean is back" — it is worth pointing out that this is his interpretation, not necessarily an accurate account, but it isn't hard to imagine.
* * *
Yes, I know. That thing is sort of a poem, only it has a very basic rhyming structure that surely no poem does, not these days. Not that I know much about poetry. And it is sort of a set of song lyrics, only not set to music or with a chorus or probably many other things.
It is really intended as spoken word and I wrote about 15 years ago, when I first started to listen to a lot of Tom Waits, which is probably obvious as it is more or less something I think I imagined delivered by a Waits-esque character circa-1976's alcohol-soaked Small Change.
Though I wro it so long ago and barely think about it, or the small number of other lyrical-type things I've bothered to write, I've been thinking it about since Irish comic Sean Hughes died of cirrhosis of the liver aged just 51.
Coz that the is obvious irony in that poem/song/thing, of course. Too much booze does kill you, maybe not tonight but some night, like October 16, 2017, in a hospital having a cardiac arrest while getting treated for liver disease, if you are Sean Hughes.
And I am aware I am writing about this on a blog called "An Alcoholic's Guide to Modern Life" with a tag line "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are drink". I guess I just fucking love irony.
One thing about Sean Hughes was he also wrote poetry, like in a way I would never really dream of doing. Serious poetry, like the now-widely reported on poem "Death" that featured in 1993's Sean's Book.
I don't know almost anything about poetry, so I can't judge it, but some of it seemed alright to me, some seemed pretentious, but I don't really know. Sean Hughes could be quite earnest when he wanted.
It is not that I haven't published a lot of poetry in my time, right here on this blog! But, with titles like "I KILL YOU NOW FUCK OFF AND GET ME A DRINK", this stuff is really too genius to even mention among poetry in general. Like it operates on a whole other level of brilliance that is beyond mere mortals (such as the Nobel Prize for Literature judges who keep ignoring me).
I am generally not interested in mortal poetry, even my own. Fuck, especially my own. the rare times I try to write it seriously, I do my hardest to seek to forget the fact.
But in honour of Sean Hughes, I will do something I have never done — and post here something poetry-related that I wrote seriously. Feel free to go to his funeral and heckle him about this point.
I will also note a piece Sean Hughes wrote a couple of years before his death on alcohol. He had quit drinking, then started up again.
The piece, entitled The fine line between drinks and 'proper' drinks, discusses the tragedy of alcohol in society, especially Irish society. Particularly noticeable is the suggestion he makes that his friends welcomed his return to drink as "the old Sean is back" — it is worth pointing out that this is his interpretation, not necessarily an accurate account, but it isn't hard to imagine.
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