{"id":48243,"date":"2019-06-22T11:53:37","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T15:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=48243"},"modified":"2019-07-07T12:34:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T16:34:42","slug":"bacchus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/bacchus\/","title":{"rendered":"Bacchus"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard the words you never want to hear
\n He’s in the hospital<\/em>
\nI pulled together my determination
\n He’s in the ICU<\/em>
\nI put together the dollars
\n He will be there all week<\/em><\/p>\n

They told me it was Moloch who would kill my friends
\nThey never mentioned how deadly Bacchus would be
\nThey told me it would be car crashes and heart attacks and unforseen accidents
\nThey never said it would be the numbness we so easily reached for
\nThey told me it would be war and crime and all the ugliness that comes with it
\nThey never told me it would be the poison we so blithely swallowed<\/p>\n

That drink doesn’t hurt anything
\nThis bottle doesn’t make a difference
\nIt’s just been a bad day
\nLay off, it’s been a bad month
\nCalm down, it’s just been a bad year… bad two years… three years… life<\/p>\n

We took it down
\nWe took it in
\nWe drank like drowning men
\nWe became saturated in it
\nWe were soaked and drenched in it
\nSo enamored and entranced we kept drinking it
\nAnd danced around Bacchus’s throne
\nNeverminding the lingering sadness in his eyes
\nAs we slipped and fell at his feet<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until later, much later
\nThat we started to count the cost
\nWe stood in fear
\nAround beds and sidewalks
\nStaring at what some of us had become
\nWe stood in black
\nAround graves and pews
\nStaring at the end results<\/p>\n

I walked into an ICU for the second time in my life
\n “He is looking better today.”<\/em>
\nBecause I refuse to let another member of this family die
\n “If you see me with a drink in my hand punch me in the face.”<\/em>
\nWithout at least saying that I tried
\n “You said that in front of witnesses, don’t doubt me, I will do it.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard the words you never want to hear He’s in the hospital I pulled together my determination He’s in the ICU I put together the dollars He will be there all week They told me it was Moloch who would kill my friends They…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":941,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/941"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48243"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59220,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48243\/revisions\/59220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}