Hard Work

One must drink till one cant think, That has been the premise for this misguided sink, 8 PM Wednesdays, Doolally quiz Trivia exhibitionism and alcoholism on display Ride this wave into the weekend And no thoughts will come to play. 7 am Tuesdays and Thursdays Up at the break of dawn Eric asks me why I’m forlorn, I say it’s tough to wake misery in therapy, That it comes in steady courses Like fluctuation on rigged bourses, Eric has me seated facing a wall, Speak freely, out you must let it all, I’ve come here at 21 with a drinking problem For a seemingly bright chap I’ve turned out to be quite a bum, I can’t look in the mirror these days I can’t fit in the mirror these days, It is hell, and I have welcomed most of it, And I cant write myself out of it, Neither can I profit off it, A memory comes the canvas Srinagar in May the year before, mother suddenly sick And the sunken loneliness only grows, Her light has been my only light Her light is the reason I fight, And even after she recovered, I clung to the bottle, it left me weathered, Eric says that I’ve bottled all my love in spirits He might be right. 3 months of sobriety, Better, clean but not lean, Fate is still mean But I still fight, I fight for my right. From a friend’s mother, an exercise plan, a new diet, New light, I will win this fight. From 133 kilos, a shred for the mythos, Every night a fatigued death, fresh breath at dawn, Still forlorn, but the spirit must keep moving on, The digits, they must drop On a weekly basis, they must drop, Tangible finality, the end goal is right before me, And from there on, new direction, Lots of female attention, but mainly superficial, It’s always actually superficial, But the spirit must keep moving on, The digits they must drop, If there’s any redemption for the slack of my past, If there’s a way for the down spiral to stop, The spirit must keep moving on, And the digits they must drop. Eleven months pass, I’ve run out of gas, The digits have dropped, the women have shared their digits too, Seemingly all good in the hood, Empty inside still, What more must the spirit do to rouse a sunken will? Another month goes by, Beers by Danube and beef and rye, The loneliness only grows as the Blue river flows by Chopin and Strauss for the continental journey, A sickness in me has only started burning, And from there, another downward spiral to the gallows This time even harder to rouse the spirit’s hollows, But I fight, cause that’s the only thing I get right, Pot belly on display, gotta stop before I pop And now the digits again, they must drop, For you to see me in a new light, The digits, they must drop, It’s hard work dear, if only you cared to know my fight.

Maulik is a writer, poet and meme enthusiast whose raw and frank writing style connects us readers with our often repressed dark side, enabling us to face our demons head on, breaking down our doors of denial one poem at a time.