I drink in order to write
and, often times,
I write to be able to to drink
without the fallout
that surely would
accompany it
otherwise.

There is a madness,
an itch in the back of the throat,
hoarse from screaming,
broken now and caught
on the knowledge
that no one has heard,
let alone understood,
again and again and…

If you are not dead
you are far from me.
If you are not dead
you are knocking on
some other sucker’s
door. Perhaps he is
in debt and in love,
cursed in similar
afflictions. Perhaps he is
up to the eyes in hedge funds
and stock investments,
his symmetric face smiling
down his checkbook at you,
attracting you in ways
mine never could.

If you are not dead
than perhaps you
are happy.
If you are not dead
than perhaps
you are sad. I certainly
will never know.
Do wedding bells ring already?
Do the long nights of love
break bones in bitter morning?

For a long time this imagination
proved worse than any reality
could have possibly been;
I lay in fevered dreams,
praying for answers,
only hoping to find
where love had been lain to rest.
Now, it is just nice to be rid
of the whole deal.

The universe makes
a lot more sense
without you.

There are times that
it gets so bad around you
that it fills you with it,
like sea-filled
lungs, like that
last breath of water
before darkness.
There are times that
it sinks in your chest
and your arms and that space
right behind your eyes,
that dull ache.
Death comes slow
amidst the wreckage;
in the chest and
the arms and the
toilet seat, gripped
white knuckles and the
stale, thick burn of acid
in the throat.

There are times that
it gets so bad around you
that it fills you with it.
Death comes slow,
persistent in its march,
and you look upward,
bleary-eyed and shook
to the bone, into its
balanced gaze
knowing, but never truly
able to understand,
how close it really is.

There is an incredible sadness
that sits upon the city like
a dense fog,
if you look close enough to see it.
It tastes sweet in coughed breath
and in the early, endless night
you can see it there, stagnant
through the windows and
the trees.
There is an incredible sadness
that sits in this city,
corrupting slowly and fully
and without mistake.
The people sometimes know it
and can do nothing,
others embrace it,
most do not know it as it
leans and sits about them.
An old man leans his dark
head against the railing
of the Wanamaker building
steps, coughs twice, a
gloved hand covering cracked lips.
Walk past, breathe in
the sweet stagnation of a
fire that no longer has any
wick to uphold it.
There is a sadness here,
If you look close enough.

Another drink;
spit in the sink shows
red against porcelain,
fleeting concern.

Another drink;
what is there ever
to worry about?
I could make an
argument for nothing
and everything both
alongside one another.

Another drink;
taste the iron alongside
the bitter burn of alcohol,
the body goes more often
than not before the mind does.
It is unfortunate to have it
the other way around.

Another drink;
spit red again,

I am fighting myself
to keep the pace.

I was comfortable in bed,
Sunday morning’s as a kid
in the blooming heat
of a late Spring morning.
I could hear the phone ring
and my mother move slowly
to answer.
Muffled conversation beget
an anguished cry and
hustled words of consolation.
I couldn’t make it out from the noise.

I didn’t quite care because of
the hangover aches that
wracked the young limbs in
atrophy of the body and of the soul,
instead keeping eyes closed from
the light in the window and rolled
into a drifting sleep.
It wasn’t until I re-awoke
and staggered to the kitchen
that I saw her shaking her head,
crying slightly atop the kitchen counter.
A quick glance upwards with
tears renewed in strength.

Death need only come in quick,
effortless seconds upon a blackout night.
Hell need only come in a phone call
and a mother’s terrified explanation.

They swore it would rain,
overcast and cold, the grey
permeating every dead blade
of grass, every bare bough,
staggering in the wind,
and every soul beneath,
staggering for other reason
toward some unknown eternity.

The forecast told of rain,
but it is only the terrible,
everywhere grey and the
cold of low clouds and
wind that blows in deprecation
through and above everything,
those buildings leaning in the mist
weighed down by their steel frames,
and myself, inundated beneath it all.

They swore on rain
but there is nothing.
Nothing but the grey
and the cold and
the hangover death
of the soul that exists in
this Spring pre-bloom morning