What’s this, again? My favorite! Whiskey and ink, pen and drink And blood to punctuate It all. Cross-out the L’s and dash off the I’s Filling the spaces where tears used to fall, Fill up the keys, drained arteries And I give them to my stanzaic-self Who weeps on command, is a comedy Since these dramas of the mind Often too risky for poets’ traverse The grey imprisoned between the words Is home and salvage for us bleeders, but Too often A delight For you readers. Can I write drunk? And let the truth come out? I could be at the end of the barrel of my own words, Absolve the guilt, art itself or no, I could find the beautiful truth at the end —And hope I misfire. What if I’m not strong enough? What if this kills me? The whiskey and the pen are the friends As much as they are paring knives —But, never have the dark times seemed so bearable. I get drunk off the tears I hold back All the faces I wear, Who, like fantasies, from inside rend and tear To get to the top Until the hole of suicide surfaces… And I stand a stare, pretending it is beautiful And write a poem about it, ******* myself to become the empty beloved poet The suffering aloof homework assignment The voice of sadness The joke The cliché, Always and ever To hold me over till the next day Distracted by a different kind of self-loathing, Through that, I can go on To forget it Again. Tonight. Tomorrow. And then again, Till death.