The Empire of Alcohol
April 23, 2014 | Alcohol Abuse, Poetry
By Richard Kravitz, MD

A patient in the arms of alcohol.

I must go, he says, as he stands outside

The temple, a ruined temple, his bald pate topped

By a splattered port wine stain, a tattered skull cap,

Remnant of respect for an amnestic God.

He can discuss literature and politics,

In coherent discourse, but his upright posture

Obscures the prostrate soul: he has joined the derelict choir

Of despair. Respite, respite is all he can take,

Until the buzzing in his head becomes an importunate roar,

The sound whose only resolution is a drink.

Not given to weeping, his lower lids glisten,

And he’s overcome by sudden squalls of tears,

Moved by our embrace. His exile, though,

Is permanent. I must go, he cries, I must go.

Biographical statement:

The imaginary title I have for my poetry is "All of Psychiatry in One Poem," and by that I mean that I try to explore the possibilities of expression, of feeling and thought, in my poems as I do with my patients.

The frayed dignity of the patient described in this poem, his intelligence matched by the inexplicable intransigence of his alcoholism, moved me to describe the clinical encounter.