Archive
05/27/09 - (2)
Survival by the Bottle
For the past two decades, Your curmudgeonly fifty-year-old internist, Dr. Moïse S. (Schmeul) Shimkus-Blankstein (In whom Heidelberg's professors failed to inspire, instill, An abiding sense of compassion, Any trace of a bedside manner that cares) Has persistently browbeaten you to quit your drinking,
Desist from tippling epical amounts of red wine, Sipping, dipsomaniacally, two or three bottles, nightly. To his mean-spirited orders, you always meekly respond, "I promise I'll quit — I really will. I'm just not yet quite ready," Which predictably earns you a few snarls, glares. "You know you're destroying your kidneys, liver, Drinking yourself into the grave."
For sixty strenuous years of survival, Your weight hasn't varied an ounce, from its 120 pounds, Despite your always leaving the table starving, Feeling empty, hollow, wishing for more, always more, Knowing, in your mind and your gut, Why you can't do other than just pick at your food, Before pouring yourself another bottomless glass of red.
"Doc, do you realize that if I stop drinking, I'd easily lose another ten, twenty, thirty pounds? And you know what that would mean: I'd be back in Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, back in Majdanek, With my skin inside out, wearing my skeleton, And me sipping nothing soup, begging rats for breadcrumbs. And maybe I wouldn't get liberated, this time."
05/27/09 - (2)
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