SOME WORDS ON DANIEL BAILEY'S THE DRUNK SONNETS

http://magichelicopterpress.com/drunk.htm

The Drunk Sonnets are obsessed with breathing and love and loneliness and Daniel’s inability to think and feel and function properly in the absence of a friend or a beer or a good woman. The poems are claustrophobic, an oxygen tank set to its highest setting while the man on the other end has embraced his demise, drunk, alone, but for memories of lost love; and for Bailey there is only one; she is everything and nothing and beautiful and careless:

I’M GLAD THAT YOU’RE SILL ALIVE AND DOING WELL
I’D HATE TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU DON’T EXIST
I CAN SAY THAT HONESTLY, AND I’M GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO LIE
IF YOU KNOW ME, AND I THINK YOU DO, YOU KNOW I’M NOT A LIAR

EXCEPT FOR WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IN MY LIFE
AND I HAVE TO BACK AWAY FOR A LITTLE WHILE
INTO ANOTHER CORNER OF LIFE WHERE I’LL SAY ANYTHING
TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE ME RIGHT NOW

I can’t remember reading an alcoholism this tender this vulnerable and heartbroken and incapable:

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE WANT LIFE TO MEAN SOMETHING
I WISH I WERE THE MOSS ON THE TREE STUMP IN ANOTHER STATE
AND WE NEVER ENDED UP SEEING EACH OTHER

I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WHAT I DRINK EVERY NIGHT CAN MAKE ME FEEL
ANY DIFFERENT, AND I THINK WE’LL BE GONE FOREVER RIGHT NOW
I AM GONE AND YOU ARE GONE AND THAT IS IT

Ultimately, I’m not convinced that Daniel will make it. Reminiscent of the best parts of Plath’s Bell Jar, these sonnets are mad and hopeless. They offer no solutions, no redemption, just a human being stripped to blood and tiny fragments of muscle tissue who is just as uncertain of his escape as I am:

I CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW WITH MY MOUTH FULL OF SAND
IF YOU WANT TO TALK LEAVE A MESSAGE AND I WILL RESPOND
AT A BETTER TIME I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND
BUT I UNDERSTAND IF YOU NEVER DO

AND IF I NEVER DO
AND IF WHAT WAS GOOD WAS NOT REALLY GOOD
BUT WE WERE TRYING TOO HARD TO BE GOOD

God bless you Daniel Bailey.