Sitting the Fence

Not done but immediate (I'd like to make it a sonnet maybe):

I'm drunk and it is raining, more, still more--
I'm drunk! And it is raining! Fast and loud.
My head sits swimming, reeling, dizzy wet.
I reel and shout, my truth too loud let out,
The outside biting, radiant, a tongue
swollen and rough and licking 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 bleating sound
but in your ear, too close, oh too damn close--
a clarion rubble, a disorder.

I stand at the window, I squat and heft
and gasp aloud, not drunk, my breath held, taut,
it's a wet squirrel, hunched and balled up stiff,
the mange of clumped fur ragged, pointed, limp,
the gray over his 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.