Waking me up is the sound of African drums in my head

Banging loud enough to wake up the dead

Can’t move, my head is as heavy as lead

Spinning fast and faster seems to my bed

Closing my eyes, only making things worse instead

Groaning, I manage to sit on the side of my bed

Cursing, I make my way to the bathroom where my babalas I hoped to shed

Standing before the mirror, my eyes are blood shot-red

“Jesus Christ on a stolen donkey, what animal had last night bred?”

The mascara so carefully applied last night, to the dogs it had been fed

“Never to drink again”, once again a mental note is made,

With difficulty, I reach for tablets in the medicine cabinet overhead,

Don’t want to think of how I will make it to the day ahead,

Ooh, I groan, I just want to lie down and play dead!

To pick up thrown clothes on the floor I bend

Under the chair I find a piece of torn plastic wrapper with ‘latex’ it read

Trying to remember the evening before I scratched my pounding head

Giving me another headache was how my way home I made

My loyal little people, I asked, in my head

What had happened and to what it had led

Neither of us remembering, I gave in and lost the thread

All memories of yester night seemed to have been shred

Making my way to the kitchen for some cereal or maybe some bread

Only to find a stranger in my white-fluffy towel his tummy he’s fed

“Great place you got … and twas fun last night,” he said.

With a big smile, “and by the way, my name is Fred.”

Copyright © Sandra A. Mushi All Rights Reserved