Ode to a Glass of Red Wine
in vino veritas?
You lurk,
more glittering than glass,
a silent afterthought
to the bite of your bitter sweetness.
You burn
like raw tobacco, unlit.
Your birth
Whether loamy, graveled,
or sandstone soiled
is collection of the flotsam and jetsam
liquefied through subterranean vein-work
of distant vineyards
into the pulpy void of the heart.
So tell me, do I speak an ode
to the wine, or its glass?
There is a sense of terrain to you, so much
that I could lick a stone,
like when I was a kid lost in
bramble and dark fruited earth.
You are fed alive
to the bloodstream, and so
I call to you in praise,
mineralized in tartaric acid.
And although I come
to you in thirst, you are
drying, puckered, parching sour.
Delicious,
you upbraid
the lips and tongue with
a lush and coating tannic kiss. You drip
as blood of earth, and lick
the vanillic afterscent resulting from
contact with oaken barrel.
Fruit and cedar-wood breathes
earthly bitter tears, directly onto the glass.
Now you’ve soured
into darkness and vermilion equal to gemstones,
which is why
you have often been compared to blood.
But blood is quite another color,
having none of your translucency
and glint of purpled ruby: the quickly moving
light that liquid echoes.
You are
a brainwash all
a-flush with fermented warmth. This is true
Whether you are born
for festivities or for fighting—
quests or quarrels—
a heated ether-driven inebriation serves
the spinning brain, in dancing, in talking,
and telling intimate truths.
You serve the tearing, biting, broken rage that
deals blows, curses, or laughs.
What are you?
You seem only to be a beverage,
an ordinary thing and everyday gulp,
but you are more than that:
You are a fierce and joyous god,
Bacchus, the Loosener,
terribly free and blissfully brutal,
as seasonally dismembered as your vine.
You are called Twice-Born,
now to die again in the stomach.
You are the vine, and the bunch to press,
to trample;
You are called Twice-Born,
As serially consumed as befits your illusory ordinariness,
IN VINO VERITAS: In Wine is Truth.
This is your Wisdom/
This is your Farce.
About the Creator
Rob Angeli
sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt
There are tears of things, and mortal objects touch the mind.
-Virgil Aeneid I.462
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Comments (25)
Congratulations 🎉 I enjoyed this so much 👏👏👏
Descriptive. Seductive. Inticing. Rich with imagery. Well done on the runner-up placement - 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Wonderful write. Brilliant. So Bacchanalian as if in the Phrygian mode! The meeting place of both inebriation and sanity. (Psst, this should have at least placed! Just sayin'.)
Smashed the subscribe button so fast, after reading this! It's just divine. I was drowning (in a good way!) in the broody, velvety viscosity of your words. Brilliant!
I forgot to come back here and say congrats on your placing in the challenge!
I love this! My favourite bit: "you burn... unlit" 😁
Congrats, Rob! Hehe, "in vino veritas" - the only thing I remember from my Latin classes :-D Also, in these two weeks, my stomach had a chance to fully appreciate the phrase :) cannot either agree or disagree, but don't regret a thing (a glass)!
This will haunt my next sip of red. Well done and congratulations.
Lush and very surreal. Congratulations. I toast your success.
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Hey there! Congrats.
Congratulations, Rob! So happy for you :)
CONGRATULATIONS on runner up!! So happy to see your name on the list, my friend, and for such an amazing poem too! 🤩😆💗👏👏👏
Well done on Runner-up spot. Loved this the first time I read it!
This is so beautifully written R! I love the tantalizing wine vocabulary you were able to impart within this! I just got back from Canadian wine country and now I've craving another trip back! 💜🍷
Damn, I don't even like wine, and yet you make me want to drink a glass. You have a way with words, superb!
Well-aged wisdom! thank you
“This is your farce” this was so tantilizing, great ode!!!❤️
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"Your birth Whether loamy, graveled, or sandstone soiled is collection of the flotsam and jetsam liquefied through subterranean vein-work of distant vineyards into the pulpy void of the heart." Wow. Absolutely gorgeous phrase here. It speaks to the end, "a farce," the twice-born reality of a wine that dies in a void. Twice-dead, more like. I adore your comprehension into red wine; it's quite remarkable. Not sure I've yet seen an ode to alcohol, but I love this one, as it masquerades as a celebratory piece, and underneath, we see the truth of its existence. A true ode. Well done!
What an epic ode!! I chat a whole load of rubbish under the influence of wine so definitely a farce for me. 🤣 seriously though... Great, well-rounded, poem! 😁
Wow. Great. When I read "you upbraid the lips and tongue with a lush and coating tannic kiss," my own lips puckered. Also love the line about breathe bitter tears, the the truth and farce at the end wrapped it all up nicely. Well done.
This is phenomenal! I love the dichotomy at the end with the choice to use translated Latin calling it the truth "truth" and then use your own words to call it a farce. Because while wine can be a lovely experience and feeling its effects can lead to great conversations and good times, there's a line that we all must teeter on in our consumption. Really, really, really wonderful use of vocabulary. I'm placing my bets on this piece for placement.
I was very fascinated with the dark fruited earth. Also, I enjoyed the way you compared wine to blood. Loved your ode!
Tipsy, like a few glasses of red wine. I thought of ode to wine, but you found the words. Brava, bravo to wine.