It was late December.  Stripped trees
swayed in lost rhythms to the accelerating
breeze, scattered leaves moaned and drifted
across somber fields, cold and stabbed,
rolling below featureless city streets in
black shadows.

I walked towards the edge of the rising bridge
and stared at the gray clouds, how their stained
soul gazed into my watery eyes, a flawed existence
smashed in broken ballads, screeching scars,
turned away by earth and Saturn.

Above my ice-covered heart where the waterfalls
rise and freeze in deadened degrees, undesired,
the heaviness of waves crying in the dark,
destroyed by rejection, those crushed nights
surrounded in loneliness, sinking into slammed gutters.

I could taste the raged liquor settling inside
my dry heart, the reeking smell scarred
and conflicted, ravaged eyes exposed
and searching, as I watched the sleeping
sun fade away, discolored, drifting
in failure.