45 degrees to the left on a two lane road
Would stop the screaming
Stomach no longer boiling in its own acid
Just drowning in black coffee and take out
Sweat no longer leaving a cartoon outline on the sheets
Just need a cool ring pressed against my palate
They said it would be cheaper
Coffee quickly out spends the rot gut
Staring through gleaming glasses
Rather than the amber round, looking up
Smiling and swirling around
A dancer in the dark
My own symphony
Playing for me, just me
As I shake shake shake
It was always either the DTs or the cold
A ***** soaked cocoon of the moth I am now
Not right
Never quite
Roll the dice
Let the monthly chips fall where they may
Collect like them a thousand purple hearted liver spots
Build a castle of coins
Circular towers, thrown stones in miller’s glass lighthouse
Addict yourself to getting better
Its the only way forward
Even when you are being pulled backwards

A cool autumn night.
A once bustling house, now silent.
The crack of the ice.
Warm light dancing in amber chaos.
Chaos turns to a shimmer.
Clinking slows. Stillness.
A new, anticipatory silence.
Patience.
Let it melt, just enough.
Now it's time.
Another clink breaks the silence.
The smell of oak.
The cold touch of ice.
The hedonic burn of aged grain and corn.
A gentle euphoria smoothes the edges of the world.
Contentment.

There once was a man from Kentucky
Whose bathtime included a ducky,
     Some whiskey, a shotgun,
     A beerbong, a potgun,
And a spirited dolly named Chucky.

As the gramophone in the corner spins Stravinsky
i lie wake in a puddle of my own *****.
I can wash off the smell of pubs and whiskey
but can never run away from it.

As the devil drags me again by my hand
to the tear-stained paper at my old table,
i could tell you that I'm keeping my mouth dry
but you wouldn't believe this fable.

It'd be just not to trust it, there is reason, for
a man who had tried drinking away pain
is a man who'd succumbed to a bottle before
and a man who will do it again.

one eye so nearsighted that i can't see tomorrow/
the other so farsighted i can't see today.

As i am writing this i am drinking my poison cold,
counting on gray hair all the years that are gone

liquor and love are the poor man's gold
and a man's wealth - dying loving or dying loved.

I don't remember if it was happiness
or of thereof lack
but the jack in the box looks
now like a box of jack

this is that feeling I love
a buzz
like a happy vibration radiating through the skin
my face feels like I’ve been poked for a dentist appointment
my head is swirly and positive and I kind of feel like dancing or complimenting pretty girls on their smiles and their hair
when I close my eyes I feel high
a fulfilling swelling gulps my chest and I’m feeling giddy
oh what a world when suddenly everything feels fine again from a tall alcoholic beverage and a fine February day
it’s not that complicated really
This thing called life

I am drowning in the bubbles that my father introduced me to.
sipping on things I never should have known about
at such a young age

I am genuinely scared about my very existence.
I am so, so exhausted.

I drink until my eyes blur and the world spins.
Then when I wake up
I am still tired.

bubbles.

what a funny concept...

tiny little spheres

floating

in the sips of drinks I should not have.

At a bar near Grand Central Station,
Free flowing alcohol and conversation.
The steady sound of champagne glasses clinking,
In celebration of new beginnings.
Strangers drunkenly exchanging digits,
With the hope of a quick backdoor exit.

i lied about the exorcism--
that neon ghost
still haunts my phone
and though all of us are silent
you sing my tinnitus till the storms get back.

you don't know it's been raining all week
because i never told you;
i'm so scared of spirits and spiders
and weathering small-talk--
your sun and my curtain-clouded bedroom.

in a sunpatch on your floor,
i dreamt of leaping off the grid
and landing back in lake hylia a hero;

now i only dream of daytime drinks,
a summer solitude as dull as the ends of my hair
'cause i can't even throw back my dad's ninety proof
without the sun in my eyes

so the truth is
between zelda and zookeeping
i've been seancing on the dusty carpet
arranging myself around album booklets and ***** shirts

and maybe i couldn't help it

maybe i lit a couple candles by your name
not thinking you'd think of me
or think to shine solar snapshots onto my pillow--
a presence to make me breathless
enough that i can't
***** them out

and they keep me up at night