In which, following the advice of the drunk painter, our prince drinks of the wine and discovers, once lost, that the intellect is actually quite useful.

***

A minor, yet, our bottle digging miner
Aspired to be a viticultured diner,
As, having witnessed cultured men and wives
Partake the grape before each other swives,
He knew there was no finer way to drink
And, as youth of no consequences think,
Upon the wine a stupor did he sink.
However, as he fell the sky grew grey
And all the devil’s debtors came to prey
Upon a mind equipped for nothing hard -
Lucidity of intellect they marred -
Forcing his quill to paint in colours trite,
For all he had was dulled emotions sight
Which minus mind brings minor might to bear
Upon those puzzles angels parse with care;
For human nature comes without a law
That may explain the lure of bloody war,
And fears intentions through the callous night,
And pain’s endeavours to our spirit blight,
And all the seas that flow through souls a’tide
The shores where conscience sits, or did reside,
And love’s distractions splayed throughout a life
That touch the heavens bright or augur strife.
As such the heart alone is set adrift
When left to all man’s broken pieces sift
Without that guide whose faculty ensures
A straighter path when fog of night obscures.
And of what’s felt, not thought, this too was dulled;
Each precious pain intoxication culled,
For pain in minor dose may fuel a rhyme
And bring on melancholy for a time
(That precious balm that fraught romantics crave
To, from entitled joy, their muses save)
Spurring a clarity so long dismissed
On those who pray the opioid will whisk
Away discomfort’s sensible advice
To purge the rot brought on by lurid vice.
Thus ‘pon the dawn our boy with head aflame
Read of the page his labour was to blame
And, witnessing the taste his lines omitted,
He knew no muse was to his cause committed.