Let me go in the Dark

I want to be in there
In the space of corpulent, infectious glands
Swallowing innocence with labyrinthine hands

Let me be one with the Night

My home is over there
In a place of ubiquitous fears
And a plethora of basking tears

Let me soak in the abyss

The void is so near
A comely figure,
an evocative sadist and protégé
Dripping candle wax on me
in San Lorenzo, Paraguay

Let me walk among ghosts

In the Portal Del So hotel
Tossing back Xanax;
Vicodin with a liquor chaser
Gin and vermouth, *****,
anything to forget her.

Let me wait in living purgatory

With other pods of skin
When the wind shakes the barley,
back home
Where a wife and son
never left me alone.

Let me go in the dark

Past the tortured guilt and sorrow
Where a family is made of flesh
and not ash
Where a house remains
and the fires don’t last

Let me cry and weep in silence

In a room with rotting drapes
A static-channel TV,
a two blade ceiling fan
People engulfed in one another,
A demon  for a man

Let me shower in cold, thickening blood

Standing atop broken medicine cabinet glass
So many packs a day of cheap cigarettes
and loose women
None ease the pain
like the morphine in the kitchen.

Let me go into the chasm

The vein snake is thirsty.
I take a little more each time it feeds
But maybe not waking up
is what the snake needs

Let me sleep in the dark

While infomercials for prayer play
Juxtaposed to a zealous vagabond
and father
The last serpentine dosage
for a broken martyr  
Let me go in the dark

Let me see them again

I’ll wait and watch the room shrink
And hope my eyes
never dilatorily blink.