Four bottles and counting.
It's still not enough to dull my senses
Or tranquilize my still-racing mind.
Not enough to dull my ears
To your voice whispering
In between clumsy lines
Blaring from the radio,
Not enough to blind me
To your face etched
in the writhing smoke of every exhale.
I've finished a whole pack already
Just to see your smile again and again.

When they told me that smoking would **** me,
They had no idea how true that was.
But they never told me it was the face in the smoke
That would be my undoing.

Six shots and a beer chaser --
Enough to make me dead to space and time,
But not quite dead to the world of dreaming,
Where your lips await me,
Where everything was still perfect,
And my happy ending was within reach.

My mind drags me down
To this infernal paradise
Time and again,
This quagmire of delightful lies,
Despite my feeble protests
About moving on and recovering.
Waylaid by my own consciousness,
What can I do but capitulate?

Thrashing about in this thicket
Of denial and disappointment,
All I can hope for
Is a toehold
With which to stand
Up against this onslaught,
Just to preserve my shaky hold
On sanity and normalcy.
To, at the very least,
See the pinprick of light
At the mouth of the abyss.

I've withdrawn from the sun
Busied myself with the amusing distractions
This world has to offer,
Buried myself
In work
Video games
Thai boxing,
But still pursue you in the dreaming,
Unless I down another bucket of beer
And guarantee a blackout for the night
And a screaming hangover in the morning.