Poetry: Selections From George Gad Economou

Writing Process

 

go on a two-week drunk;

survive the most dangerous dive bar;

fuck the filthiest whore in the most rancid bar of town;

turn an underground strip joint into home;

befriend a loan shark;

break your veins after shooting too much junk;

bake ‘n shake ice every dawn, when even a drop of sweat can cause an explosion;

snort enough blow to go without sleep for four days;

drop enough acid to be haunted by hallucinations for seven days;

find the love of your life dead in your arms when you’re twenty;

go bankrupt because you gambled it all away in the wrong matches;

learn how to turn cocaine into crack just to make ends meet;

sleep in whorehouses;

drink with the whores;

lose a good girlfriend because she found you dead by OD;

see friends die from substance abuse.

it’s in pain poetry resides; poetry demands personal

suffering, it requires torments that’ll make Hell seem like a theme park ride.

recently, I read some poems from old acquaintances, pseudo-intellectuals

that have nothing to offer. it’s alright, they deserve to

be published, it’s modernity’s motto, but their

lines are algid, heartless, dull. no real

suffering there, only too much reading; it’s fine

reading Buk and Hem and Thompson and Celine and DeQuincey.

it’s different when you’re living their lives before their lines

touch you. I read Junk after I had already

gone cold turkey for the first time. I read

On the Road after cruising down a highway (for the first and so far last time)

to reach a remote lakehouse.

the pain is real, fiction becomes reality and my reality

has become fiction. it’s fucking

alright as the booze torrent keeps on

growing stronger and I dissipate deeper into the rhythm of

the resurfacing memories that demand to be

put down, to claim their stake at fucking immortality.

buy me a drink, I’ll tell you you’re a great writer.

buy me ten drinks, I’ll show you what you need actually to become a wordsmith.

the benders keep on getting longer and it all

feels fine, except for my liver that refuses to die.

Weekends of Routine

 

Friday night, Four Roses on

the rocks and watching football, trying to

make a living out of twenty-two guys (on occasion, gals)

chasing a ball in a field.

some nights, it goes great; raking in profits of

a hundred or two hundred euro and I’m

thinking about increasing my

bets. then, I lose a hundred euro and am

forced to continue betting small money.

it’s a hard way of

making a living; you can have a magnificent

week, make more than a thousand—even when you

bet small but on a lot of matches—then lose

a thousand, or more, next week, when no

match goes your way.

it’s taking a chance; with the way the

job market is, and with how unmarketable my

books (and I) are, I’d rather take

the odds of Over 2.5 on a match in Thailand than

submit to a boss paying me peanuts and thinking he owns my ass.

Right Places

 

the dimness of a whorehouse

foyer is the best drinking atmosphere. you

get your well vodka or your rotgut, smoke a

few cigarettes, and watch the clients come and

go (they’re the only ones coming, too). the lady pimp

sits with you, sharing real booze and stories with

you while the poor working woman goes into

the room every thirty minutes to spend a few

boring minutes on her back, or on all fours. she tries

to coax you into following her into

the room, you decline and have another drink; bourbon

dick is the best way to save money in a whorehouse.

the lady pimp asks for your

stories; you give them to her straight, like a triple

shot of mezcal meant to murder a dinosaur.

she’ll clink her glass onto yours, recognizing another

lost soul treading into the dark mist of hopelessness. you

even get offered free sex, you refuse and just

drink because booze and the supernal numbness of intoxication is

far more important and superlative than a few minutes of being inside a pussy.

it’s inside the four walls of a whorehouse great stories hide, and often

come to die, and you return night after night, as getting inebriated

in the right places is how you kindle the flames that set the pages on fire.

Shooting Nights

 

heroin nights staring at the

crepuscular sky, smirking at

the soaring dragons carrying memories from

long-lost nights. phantom

kisses landing on my arid lips and the brimful

lowball of Four Roses offers a false promise of reunion.

the vein throbs, the head goes numb; eyelids shutting

on their own, the brain’s losing control. remember how to

breathe, the sage words of Emily that is not

around anymore to hold my hand. I chug the

lowball while the junk swims in my

bloodstream. breathe in

breathe out. for hours at a time as the crepuscular

sky turns bright, the sun comes out and I flip

the effulgent fucker off. breathe in, breathe out.

why do I bother?

another suicide attempt thwarted by the

primordial survival instinct I always fail to subdue.

Days of Abundance

 

days of abundance; ordering 300-plus euro worth

of bourbon for less than a fortnight, able to gamble

away 500 on a weekend—and when you make a profit, you

increase the next booze order, gamble more during the week.

days of not worrying about anything but getting

drunk, punching out a few decent poems every night, and

waking up on time for the games you have money on.

of course, they never last, just like anything remotely good.

after the days of abundance comes nothingness, the weeks

of surviving on drugstore rotgut, bitter box wine, and smoking

leftover filters forgotten in your ashtray. instead of

choosing between buying five bottles of Four Roses or three

bottles of Four Roses and two of Buffalo Trace, you

choose between eating half a rotisserie chicken or two

apples and some crackers.

the days of abundance shall always live on as

a memory of better, drunken days even when

home becomes an underground passageway and the only

blankets around are made of yellow snow.

the days of abundance survive in the mind and on the page,

as death takes another step forward and the infamous light

grows dimmer.

 

 

 

 

 

George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science, currently works as a freelance writer, and has published three novels and three poetry collections. His latest book is Smoking Rot Gut Drinking Junk (Anxiety Press). His work has appeared in various places, such as Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.