lovely angels from down below,
fallen brethren buried under mountains of ice.
black frosting covers the cake,
countless suicide attempts thrown out of broken
windows.
mercy songs reverberate in the walls,
from the bourbon bottle
emerges a
mermaid;
a sight never before beheld,
never again to be witnessed.
all over, once more.
the ice never melts,
we never ran out.
false promises painted
on beautiful canvases;
the moments are gone
forever lost.
somewhere in the depths of the wild
seas
dances the magnificent siren of
old. forever gone,
never to return.
moments, the daily struggle
of finding junk in
dark alleys of lost cities.
hunger and thirst,
always with a bottle under the arm.
crawling, dancing,
praying,
hoping.
futile efforts,
desperate cries under heavy snowfall.
holding hands that
are not there.
fabulous mansions,
gardens in the middle of the living room;
cheap beer,
stale tobacco.
cold, pointless conversations.
fancy bars, gin and tonic,
overpriced, underwhelming.
nothing.
the empty walls cry in despair,
new blurry ghosts reappear out of
the mist.
ice and junk,
nowhere to run.
we always had some in the pocket,
under a mattress, or
in bags.
now, only the vague
memories
of times never to come
exist.
tears under the table,
smiles over half-empty glasses of whiskey.
no one out there,
yet I keep on calling.
waiting.
the answer never comes.
always the same question
echoing
within the beer-stained walls.
we once drank with Satan, the dark overlord of a
realm where geniuses and criminals thrive;
a true heavyweight, matching Emily and me drink to drink,
joint to joint, shot to shot; we couldn’t stop,
we kept going and going
until we
passed out on a blue couch.
morning come, He was still there, hungover and
with dry puke decorating his shirt,
we laughed at Him, He joined us—a good
sport, after all.
“I’ll see you soon,” He stated—a chill
traversed our spines—and a cloud of
black smoke engulfed the room as he
disappeared. fucker was keen on maintaining
the trite conceptions of Him.
we fired up a joint, poured two straight Wild Turkeys,
and avoided each other’s glance for about half an hour;
in our high and stoned timeline, we forgot of the
ominous prediction, and simply drank.
we drank ourselves under the table,
setting the battlefield for what was coming.
I’m still here, final preparations for the great battle
all the way down to the pits, where she
is, spying on the common enemy.
these thoughts keep me awake at night.
the heavyweights I’ve drunk under dirty tables,
the aficionados I nearly destroyed through an excess of drugs
as they naively tried to top a man that had absolutely no desire to see
another sunrise.
Satan still waits, still avoids me, waiting for
the right moment.
wine for breakfast
as I’ve decided to go light for the sake of the growing gut;
dreams from the gutter, memories from shooting galleries made
of clay, horrific images of a
funeral during a rainy afternoon in a brown graveyard.
the leaves fall, the dirt’s shoved,
no gravestone, no marking, nothing but
faint memories of a drunk year, of yellow
papers filled with words branded with fire and blood. a black
shriveled liver was found yesterday floating on a beach; must be
mine, I just can’t remember when I
last went out for a swim.
an elephant sits on my chest refusing me
even a single sip of his Pappy bourbon;
no matter how hard I beg,
how many tears I shed,
NO, is the only answer I get.
my legs are numb,
my mind hazy.
the needle, I dreamt of it last night.
memories; hallucinations; acid trips; kisses.
all gone. forgotten, erased.
are you still out there?
the mist grows denser.
hello, my old friend, it’s been a short while;
what kept you away?
new beginnings same old endings,
same old song
played in an eternal repeat.
no dancers, no lights, only blue smoke breaking
the monotony of the dark night.
empty seats everywhere,
the deserted bus drives up and down the highway with
no one to pick up.
the forest inescapable, a humongous rock blocks the only cave connected with the world;
famished monsters stalk the dark corners,
delighted in the mist. no sound but the strong wind and the hard rain.
give me a sip, I beg the elephant.
he sits lower; NO.
all right.
distant screams, another victim claimed.
blood river,
bodies wash up ashore.
no sip; the scent is intoxicating.
resisting the urge to escape; pointless.
conserving energy for the grand finale.
another body floats on the stream,
taken to places that as of yet do not exist.
the rain intensifies, washing away the final remnants
of glorious artifacts.
the night remains dark, there are no mocking stars.
no one to wait for us at home,
no one to care whether we survived another day.
we simply drank until we were petrified.
somehow, we always found our way back home,
some bizarre alcoholic mechanics guided our legs
back to the original destination—with only a handful of
instances of wrong coordination and confusion.
the bars were always full, yet empty; they lacked soul,
even the ones down in skid row, by the port,
where the bums lived and drank.
they only liked to yell at each other in their
incomprehensible (to me) language. after a few punches thrown and taken,
they stopped caring; they yelled at others.
they wanted to talk, to joke, to kill time; happy
in their state of oblivion. I didn’t like them
but I preferred them over the rest.
I drank with them, bummed drinks off them,
they bummed drinks off me. it was an unbreakable circle,
we didn’t care; somehow, I’d find my way home with
all of my belongings, minus the few bucks I had on me to begin with,
and as the rhymes fail and I strive for lines strong,
heartgripping and sorrowful,
I drain my coffee, pour some gin in the cup
and drink it down to erase all the new memories,
keeping only those from skid row and the gutter,
when I had to sell glass to pay rent and buy decent bourbon
so I could drink at home.
some people get angry when drunk, others turn still and sullen;
I’m both; sometimes throwing punches at walls, closets (and people),
and sometimes sitting solemnly in the corner, draining
bourbon and gin and tonics,
thinking of those I’ve lost, the love I’ve buried,
the endless mornings I can’t bear.
growing suicidal every night when the green moon rises,
thinking of the morning I’ll never wake up and finally feel
alright; yet, I’m still trudging through the dense mist
somehow believing
I’ll one day make it (I’ve made it out of the mist
many a time before, why not one more? or two?).
I miss the passionless embraces of the women
frequenting those same bars I used to haunt; the hopeless
company that had given up—I hadn’t. now,
I understand them better.
even though I’d never grow to like them,
I sometimes miss their company, if for nothing else,
for the chance to throw some punches and then share a drink
free from lethal, homicidal frustration.
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