Scrolling through the poems
O’ the poems,
The muse of the Arabica—
Yet, how many the Robusta—
Is the laurel champion of the
Mind’s strongest conjurings.
Like some kind of spell
We poets weave the strong drink
To bless it like Dionysus,
The drunken wine of the gods;
Foul Cretans they are to juice our minds
With the spirits of the age…
O’ Arabica, thou muse…
Robusta! None sing of thy tart fame.
The elixir of the Pagan rights
To bless the bounty of the cup
Rather than the bounty of the provision
Of Jehovah-Jyra
For the muse and the laurel
Of the day.
The strong drink
Which drives the prophets mad
And the minstrels sing their songs of you…
O gods, goddesses,
Lamenting like the Titans
Lamenting like thee O’ devils
Whom Paradise lost,
The war of the gods overthrowing the Titans
Is an ancient story… ancient
Despotic,
Of the regimes of one set of kings
Who overthrew another.
These manipulators,
These men who suck the venom
Of the Asp of Dionysus’
Cup, of the venom of the strong elixir
Which men praise’th
The God of Drunkenness.
Foul the beasts by which the depths of dawn’s
Chariot’s—this is no allusion, but the image has been born before I know—
Strike to the root of thy coffers
Which ingrained within is the strong drink
Which drives the whole earth mad.
For if we just praise it…
All know it is the source of our stories.
Yet… the Titans, and soon to be the gods
Will be bound in the chains of misery…
O, Saturn, Prometheus, Hyperion,
O Jove, Venus, and Hades…
Soon thy reign shall end—
And the true thunder of the God
The one who roars from the clouds of heaven
Like a Lion, in the storm which lit the sky like day does reign
And is goodly, the Spirits of which we should be drunk—
Those false gods shall be bound in those chains
Which you sought to place those whom thou ruled.
For one, I say one, has driven away the demon.
In moderation, the strength by habit causes no harm,
Yet in excess—which our story is about—
The strong drinks drives the prophets mad.
B. K. Neifert 