Being drunk doesn't excuse it.  
"You didn't know what you were doing."
"I love him, he's my son."  
You don't remember what you did.
Do you know he still does?

The purple in his cheeks.
Lips split.
Eyes scared.

Look at what you have done.
Harmed your own son.  

It hurts when he laughs.
His cheeks sting as he cries.
Back jolts up as it touches the back of his chair.

Is it fair?
The boy scared of wearing a belt.

It reminds him of his father.
The way he cornered him, till he was a pleading and crying mess.  

The smell of alcohol lingering in the air.
It makes him sick.
He remembers.

He runs his hands up his left arm.
Cigarette burned holes scattered.

He couldn't take one more beating.
He didn't know how.

He tried his hardest.
As he closed his eyes.

He tried suicide.
He tried it all, the pills, the windows.

He couldn't do it.
Leave his mother and brothers behind.

When you look at yourself,
Your psychedelic bruises,
Your prosperous veins,
Your ever-increasing freckles,
The stretch marks on your hips,
Your ever-so-slight collarbones,
Your deep blue eyes,
And you say
"Why can't I be lovely?"

Understand that when I look at you,
I see the endless galaxies,
The roads yet to be travelled,
The marvellous constellations,
I see the lines of Jupiter,
The glorious mountains,
I see the wondrous ocean.
So when I say
"Darling you already are"
Know that when I look at you,
I see my world.

If guilt and mistakes are at stake
And you're stuck in a rut that's deep with door closed shut
I urge you to break open windows and take, take what you know
And put it in a skill
Use your strength and your will
For only you, this soil, can till
I want you to walk boardwalks and talk to crowds
Convey your heart and speak out loud
To draw and write the things you feel
For though it is not original, or perhaps good enough to show others
You've given yourself something that is real

If the past clings to your ankles and you can't shake it's shackles
Take the rings of iron bound to your feet and break the bindings
The past will not last in your mind anyhow and how you know that you're free
Is when you are able to stand and accept life's steep, and harsh fee
And move and go and know and live and be happy, regardless of it's toll
And if you can do this than you have done more than all the rest who feel best
And you have beaten the ultimate test
For happiness comes sparingly in short bursts
And if you're simply warily comparing the outcomes of actions
Then you are not alive, and the beauty will pass you by
and the chance for happiness will digress and leave you alone

If you can hear then you listen to songs, and words
the footsteps the heartbeats, the wind in the tree's and it's birds

If you can see then you look at the art on the walls that apart from yourself
Can still bring to you some beauty in heart
You look at the bridges in Vermont that in the orange flush fall
Paint the world their colors as they fall from tree's that stand tall

And you like that tree should stand in the wind and not bend to the fate
For when you move with the wind you'll find that happiness does not wait

So as you stare from the window in the stone house you have built
As the flowers you brought from outside are gone, or start to wilt
And you see the sunshine line the paths that you know you should walk
And the people who stand in bands with whom you know you should talk
I hope that the cold of the stone which for years you have known
Serves reminder to find the courage to walk through the door which you abhor
And find the life and light and peace that I know the world for you, has in store.

Every morning I wake up,
I hope to find Nirvana at the bottom of my coffee cup.
The only problem is when I see the white floor
peeking through the sea of brown,
I realized I forgot to pay my student loans.

Endless months fell
like sand between my fingertips
as I tried to smooth out the creases
that covered my bedsheets
before I realised
that you were not a crease in my bedsheets,
you were the gust of wind that put them there.

I fall in love
with bits of people,
rarely a whole person.
Like crooked smiles on subway stations
or untied shoelaces
or favorite books
or eyes that look like blinking galaxies--
I see the puzzle laid at my feet,
your collarbones, your self-hatred, your bitten down fingernails, your detachment, the wars of your mind, the curve of your spine, the way you scrawl your name with indifference--
All these broken fragments that
shatter and surround me
like the wine glass I dropped,
Shards of glass,
your eyes
reflect me
the deep blood red wine
Drops like crystalline desire--
I might romanticize your flaws
and I might make walls of disillusionment,
but I swear I'll love you like you're whole.