I came to in a sickbed on January the 1st,

bowels on fire, tongue and tonsils stinking,

jackhammers splitting my skull. It was the worst

hangover on record in all history of drinking.

 

That agony was nothing to my suffering now

for in a fit of penance,  a superfluity

of over reaction, I swore a solemn vow

that the year will kick off with a dry January.

 

Dry January! Dry January!

It’s punishment for anyone, myself especially.

I’m doing Dry January! Dry January!

Pour it in a beer glass and I’d down-in-one the sea.

 

I’m floundering, trapped in an abstemious abyss,

a foreign interloper in the country of the sober.

I’ve not before endured a month that inched along like this

it’s January the 12th but it feels like mid-October.

 

The laughter from the pubs is a cruel form of mockery.

A meal in a restaurant tastes of straw when there’s no wine.

My nerves are jingling like bone china crockery.

I’m wholly mystified what prompted me to sign

 

up to Dry January! Dry January!

What momentary madness moved me to agree

to Dry January? Dry January!

I hope it does me good, ‘cos it’s nearly killing me.

 

When I take a shower it’s just dry sand that hits my head.

I need a glass of water but the tap produces dust.

There’s a matrix of crevasses along the riverbed

and the faucets of the fountains are choked up with rust.

 

They’re staging camel races on the bed of Windermere.

The reservoirs hold ashes, the mountain streams are cursed

so I’ll curl up in a cave and wait till stormclouds bucket beer

and the valleys flood with whisky on February the 1st.

 

Then Dry January! Dry January

will sluice down the plughole, a distasteful memory,

and Dry January, Dry January

won’t bother me again until I’m drunk next New Year’s Eve.