Another bottle down,
Hoping it can distort truth
Maybe if the mirror’s fogged, it can’t reflect
Can’t show him the middle-aged wreck.
Another chug of warm swill,
Hops molded, no bubbles, flat
Looking at baby pictures and a bag of teeth
Mummy left them, he feels the pain in his jaw
Maybe with another swig, he’ll be rid of it all.
Father watches from his sick bed,
Colostomy bag overflowing,
The excrement covers the scent of shame
As eyes barely raise to see his progeny
No he’s clicking the button to call the morphine
Drips entering to send him to a new dream,
Unable to stand the sight of his kindred,
As the boy that became a man, indigent.
Bryan takes another swig of clotted wine
A Merlot collecting dust upon his desk,
The keyboard is crusted over, white film, flaky
As he tends to his perversions, hoping a spark can awaken
On here he can be anyone,
But his lungs fail to inflate fully
And the liver shrivels to a freeze-dried remnant,
It’s only been minutes, but he shakes
Begging with forgiveness
Needing something to wash down the pittance
One more swig’ll do her!
Another drink to soothe.
As father watches on,
Glazed eyes and singing Aussie songs
He’s ******* post the catheter bag
Flowing yellow rivers down his bedside
Dreams fill his head,
Hoping Bryan dies,
So he could mend and heal,
Watching as he sips forever,
With jaundiced, glassed-over eyes.
If he could write it,
Or murmur sound
He’d say he was disappointed
But all he does is frown
While Bryan,
Consumed with trauma
Caught in his self-made prisons
Drowns in a sea of sick
And cheap bourbon.
Forever a child in a man’s husk
Daddy’s little burden.
Wrote this about a story I read about a man who drank himself to death and how he neglected his elderly father's care, in which in return, the father didn't bother getting his son help.
I hope we can find peace and treat each other a little kinder, especially with our families.
