A Poem by Ramona Herdman

The Demon-Barman’s Song

And here’s a drink and there’s a drink
and there’s a bottle, aye,
and I’ve distilled a brew for you
to please you till you die.

There’s whisky like a dragon’s mouth
and beer that’s like a bed.
There’s rum as warm as sugar cane.
There’s wine that’s velvet-red.

I’ve any flavour story here,
escape routes by the score –
it may look like a glass to you,
but it can be a door.

Or it can be a dream, my dear,
a magic carpet’s swoon,
a tunnel to the other side,
a stumble to the moon.

Sloe gin can safe you deep inside
the blackest bramble patch,
tequila burn you white as any
angel with a match.

Or it can be a song, my sweet,
to make you music’s flesh,
reverberate you into tune –
no thoughts, no knots, no fret.

Or fold you, like a book can do,
into another mood.
Enough dry sherry by the fire
and anyone is good

for nothing but a lolling look,
is happily reduced
to nothing but the evening’s tale –
no need to introduce

the narrative of actual life,
long and dull and true
and scarcely even story-like,
that lifetimes drag us through.

Let’s not speak of tomorrow, love,
and don’t you even think
to say a word about the price.
Sit down. Shut up. Just drink.

Ramona Herdman’s recent publications are Glut (Nine Arches), A warm and snouting thing (The Emma Press) and Bottle (HappenStance Press). Most of her new poems are about her experience of Long Covid.