The Drink (poem)

By Luke Labern

How can it be that a drink tempts me so?
The promise of anxieties washed out –
Seducing me more quickly than I know.
Lying still – more a whisper than a shout:
“Drink me now, devour all my properties
Why worry about problems like these?

“Take one sip, and you will know my magic,”
It says, persuading me to come to it.
Many lives it touch’d and turn’d so tragic,
Yet there it draws me with most sublimit wit:
“Drink me – swallow my every molecule,
Feel the calm and ignore the ridicule”.

When I felt low, it was my pedestal:
When I was worried, my nerve was then cool’d;
But now I need it more: it trick’d us all.
Feeling stronger, now I know I’ve been fool’d.
“Taste me again, till the end of your days.
I can help you in so many ways.”

Now I know that it never lied: it took,
I gave. I took, then it marked out my grave.
I can never give it a second look,
Because I know this drink will I crave.
“I’m running thin – thus you must replace me.
Why? Because I own you now; don’t you see?”