One Poem by Steven Bruce

 

Limits

 

At sundown, her father drinks

beer and blends hard liquor

with store-bought juice.

 

Within an hour, he hunches

forward and gurgles like a helpless

two-month-old baby.

 

And I say, He’s fucked.

 

She tells me, Leave him.

It’s what he always does.

 

Soon after,

he stumbles

off to bed.

 

I have encountered men

like this more often

than desired.

 

Men carried legless

from dank bars.

 

Men passed out in piss

-fermented alleys.

 

Men inebriated in kitchens,

living-rooms, and gardens.

 

Men vomiting an unhappy

life into the weary eyes

of their offspring.

 

Men who take pride in failure,

measure courage in empty bottles,

and romanticise their martyrdom.

 

Men that brag about bad hangovers,

which is the equivalent of celebrating

explosive diarrhoea after an iffy curry.

 

Men who try to drown out

whatever emptiness ails them

rather than facing it head-on.

 

Men with decades of experience

hitting the bottle

that still don’t know how to hold

their liquor

 

or when to say,

finally,

enough

is enough.

Steven Bruce is a writer and multiple-award-winning author. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous international anthologies and magazines. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award, the Firebird Book Award, and the Indies Today Five-Star Recommendation Badge. An English expatriate, he now lives and writes full-time in Barcelona.