Cheap wine and cigarettes
    classical music on a tinny
    sounding radio in a garret
    writing poetry to other
    lost souls in Boston and
    Southie and Sommerville
    and anyone who ever lit
    a candle for lost souls.

    We poets die each night.
    Our poems are lost in waves
    of cheap wine as we surrender
    to night's promises of a better
    tomorrow. Another chance to grab
    the brass ring on wooden horses.

    We wake with scraps of paper
    bearing witness to last nights
    binge of accidental brilliance.
    We stitch them back together
    best we can and offer them as
  poetry to anyone who cares.

I missed me when I had to go away.
  They said it was for my own good.
  I sort of existed in a Lithium fog.
  I was gone from me except in dreams.

I dreamed of the sun born from hell.
I dreamed of angels called sisters.
I saw a cruel king with eyes of hate
who threatened me with his love.

  Now I'm kind of back. They kept pieces
  of my brain, the pieces that made me
  cut myself in a tub of tepid water to
  bleed out this life of threatened love.