Revision

I prolly should keep it first person throughout, but the other edits are improvements, I think.

Sitting the Fence

I'm drunk and it is raining, more, still more--
I'm drunk! And it is raining! Dark and loud.
My head sits swimming, reeling, dizzywet.
I reel and shout, my truth bad noise let out,
The outside biting, radiant, a tongue
Swollen and rough and talking temples' shout
Into backbitten prayer, an attempt
To tell me something, invasively
Elongating the world, to stretch past known,
To clutter loud, the bird's beak’s bleating sound
But in your ear, too close, oh too damn close--
A clarion rubble, a disorder.

He stood at the window, the day asquat
Beside his watch, undrunk, his breath held, taut:
It's a wet squirrel! Hunched and balled up stiff,
The mange of clumped fur limp and in brushpoints,
The gray over its shoulder a relief
For lumpen gray, expanse and hunch astride,
Unmoving, patiently passing by, two,
Exclusive, not mine, then or now, out there:
My head a gong, a ringing for sobriety,
For measure, for reform—to sit the fence.