Hello and welcome to Cook and Crank, the Cosmic Poetry Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Pole, the Cosmic Poet. There comes a time when we start looking backwards in our lives. An inflection point, if you will. One last release of all those youthful hopes and dreams before we move on to what is next. If we are lucky, we take the lessons, the learnings, the sadness and laughter along with us. That is the topic of today's verses called The Last Binge of Youth, which we will hear after the break. It decked me in flummoxed, flat on the floor, as spins the corners, I lay in the roar, the roar of the brain heat, nudging the sky, though it my surface and outer rind fry. So bent the moon beams that wrapped on my head, tapping and tapping, they tapped nearly dead, my dear hardened skull, they ravished my eyes, and there they cavort, contort in disguise, like mischief and more, illusions which play, flashing upon me the cosmic okay. How long will lie I, I in muck, in muck in sucky stick muck quasi luck, for when I set eye out on this foray, early before when forth staggers the day, and still on the bus in crevices dark, while I might be there on thought questing lark, the shift workers doze, in bum sour clutch, the coffee that is there hangover crutch. So flash kept I low, and deftly pretend, I too worker am, whose toil is at end, and grimace and cough and groaningly shake, my exhausted head convincingly fake. But there was the sea, the ocean which waved, and it my step out and excursion saved, The start and the finish all was that shore, the point of far reach that my yearning bore, the flight and the strength which propelled me on, from points farther east where inches the dawn, to here where the sun at night dropping sets, and here let me set my life catching nets, and oh what the fish I scooped in my jaws, surely against this were scribbled the laws, and though creased my face and stooped did my legs, from out of my heart the sea soothed the dregs. A total review, exceeding the price, like winter's grand shine excuses the ice. Though haggard I was, I circled and sick, in one morning fast, packed fully and quick, the total I saw absorbed it within, how would it play out, my choices, my spin, I put on the past, the avenue took, will see where it leads, what apples it shook, and so I got up and dusted my fringe, all orisons to the revealing binge, it cleared me the way with confidence too, proud offward I shuffled, sand in my shoe. You have just heard the last binge of youth from the poetry collection Poems for Ocean. I'm your cosmic poet and host, Simon Pole. Visit the website SimonPole.ca for more cosmic poetry, including the book we've just read from. We'll be back soon on the Cook and Crank Podcast with more readings from the Poems for Ocean collection. Until then, remember, poetry is the water of life, though whiskey might be too. Goodbye.