A Guided Tour of Hell

by Alan Catlin

"Sometimes hot sauce was the only

way I knew I was alive."

--Michael Connelly

Drunk on Stout and wee lads

of Irish whiskey: the Black

Bush, Tullamore, Power's,

Jamie and the boys, all the dead

soldiers of an armed conflict

with the unseen, boggy nights of

smoke, the landlord's face the last

sight I would see before the fall

and after, lying back down in

sawdust and ash, three quarters of

my way through a liquid guided tour

of hell, the blessed isle, a drink for

each county taken, until the weight

of it all dragged me down and I could

no longer separate the people from

the light that awaits me at the end

of this long, dark tunnel I'm sliding

toward the end of.