Barkeep....another
Without ice
A double whiskey
It goes down nice
Feel the fire
That gentle heat
Barkeep...another
And keep it neat

A shot of whiskey
It's warm
not hot
You feel the fire
The bunring linger
Feel the fire
From one shot

You start out drinking
To **** the pain
You order one more up
Barkeep...again
The burning feeling
Inside your chest
You're still coherent
You're at you best

Time...it passes
Years go by
The fire's burning
You're gonna die
That burning feeling
Can't put it out
You move from whiskey
On back to stout

You can not stop it
The fire rules
Your eye's are red now
Red, runny pools
What once was pleasant
Now burns with pain
You can not stop it
Barkeep...again

You keep consuming
It's who you are
Half a bottle gone
You've gone too far
You can not taste it
You can not win
You can not put out
The Fire Within.

did you lose even a single night of sleep, the days i was tucked safely back at home with my mother?
was i anything more than an after-thought once you stopped seeing me?
a problem to be dealt with only once you were faced with it once again
did you ever miss me? or if not me, then the freedom to lay hands without repercussions?

did you think yourself an artist, with hands designed to create?
did you think because you made me that i was yours to hate?

when you streaked my canvas black and blue, did your reflection hurt or couldn't you look?
i bet you could, i bet you never had a second thought, i know you never had the capacity to feel or say sorry

your water colours hurt less than your acrylics, let me tell you this
i could wash away your water-blues with time and little white capsules
your acrylics took so much longer to dry, their consistency so much greater
their texture so much thicker, and stickier, and prone to staining
if they touched their fingers to the palettes you tucked away inside my brain, they'd come away covered
with hurt and guilt and shame, all these doubts and questions
purple, red and black and grey

did you dip your brush into that innocent creature's blood? the one you had me chuck
straight into the wheelie bin like you could so easily discard the lives you took?
if i'm shaking as i write this down, it's only because i remember that day with a clarity that scorns
my Achilles' heel is shovels, pellet guns and alcohol
i hope one day your bullets ricochet and when you treat your wounds you drown instead

red wine's no good for healing, anyway
but then i've never tried it, so what would i know? i'm different from you in every blessed way

all that i can do now is lay here and feel all of the hurt
and there is no way to escape it except to sleep
and i am laying here wishing that the sun would go away and that time would stop so i can lay here forever in the dark
a moment where i don't need to wake up and force myself to exist
the hurt gets worse
it gets worse
home alone once again and my bed is becoming too lonely where i can't even lay in it either

and you, where are you?
you are out and you are barely alive
and you're doing drugs and you're drinking yourself black
and everyone around you thinks that you're just having fun
when i know you drink because alcohol is your disease and you have to feed it even when you don't want to
you are sad
and you aren't here or happy
but none of them see
except for me

so i can't lay here
in peace
wondering what you are doing or if you are okay
and it shouldn't matter but it does more than anything
because you aren't wondering if i am okay

your lips are on the bottles tonight
and not on mine
and that alone is enough to destroy someone
because i love you
and your alcohol

it does not love you.

She took another sip of her fine feathered drink
I don't think this is a learned behavior
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree
Blank stares following her body sways
Making mountains out of molehills
I take an attempt to persuade her to address the issue
Only leaves a temporary result to get us off her back
The weight on her back transfers to mine
All eyes on me to intervene again
Though my shell is hard, my inside is not

Hypocrisy to what you preach
Expecting standards of another
You, yourself can never reach

Guised as a victim in your speech
Painting yourself the saint
The all knowing prophet
When pointing fingers is all you teach

Your mirror is no more than a rose pane
In it your lacks shine as another man’s toll
Pleas for reason fall in vane
All collapsing at your need of control

Perched upon your pedestal
Passing judgement all the stay
At all costs emotionally vigil
For it’s always “Your Way”

Hypocrisy in what you teach
Learn to practice what you preach

how am I expected to love one,
without even considering the other,
pretend you’re not important, a no-one,
you’re my father and she is my mother.

I know that what you did wasn’t right
you had a wife, two daughters,
yet you did it despite.
a phycological game, I hope never a fight.
why did you run away
at the stoke of midnight?

you did the unthinkable
now to save your conscience,
your memories are all fictional,
your actions towards my mother
are far from forgivable.
you tore through her confidence
forever feeling she is invisible.
alone with two young daughters
those years for her were miserable,
yet you still believe you were a father
your parenting was mythical.

not to say that your life has been kind
you fought in a war,
lost a friend in the blink of an eye.
PTSD forever haunting your soul,
you knock back a box of wine,
few beers before your midday stroll,
self medicating your entire life
to stave off those memories
and what you did to your wife.

it goes deeper than that I am sure,
a lifetime of damage
that you have had to endure,
that is why I see a man
who deserves my attention
because I do not turn my back
on another human needing an intervention.

I understand why most don’t agree,
you were a monster, a controller
my mother drowning in the dead sea.
you’re arrogant and unpleasant
but you truly care about me.
underneath your exterior layer
I believe there to be,
a man gently crying
sheltering behind the carefree.


I am trying my best to be more honest
so I don’t live out my life after my father
whose lying is spectacularly flawless
so I do not see why I should lie to you
I want a relationship because
I am scared of what you might do
a vulnerable man, I am too empathetic
I feel sorry for you,
it is not purely genetic.

it’s a sad circumstance
for a woman of my age
trying to break through her father’s exterior
and enter an unexplored cage
to break free the humanity that I believe is left
and release you from the uncertainty
what you are heading towards is death.

I'm surrounded by pieces of myself
Shards of glass so sharp it hurts
The memories that you ruined
The childhood you dictated
The love that was  lost

I cannot repair what you broke
I cannot mend what is already bent out of shape
I cannot forget the memories etched on my skin

When glass breaks
It cannot be put back together
No matter the amount of glue or tape
Or how many times you've begged for my forgiveness

I take out a broom
I sweep up the pieces
I throw them away
Not for you
But for myself

I am building homes on the shorelines in hourglasses
hoping that this time it will last.
It has been over 18 months
But I know it won't last.
I will relapse eventually
Spectacularly

And pitifully.
Because one year not drinking is like seven to an alcoholic
And I’m still ageing in years of the dog that bit me and will never let me go.

Wanna talk about magic tricks?
It's only sober I saw how much I was disappearing drinking,

So lets call this bullet caught a bullet dodged.
This spell casts me in a bad light
That i can't get my shadow out of
call me Houdini because I'm still looking for  escapes.
You will notice
There is nothing up my sleeves but attempts
so don’t tempt me,
because I haven’t been sleeping too good
and I ain’t awake any better.

For all this freedom,
sometimes I want to take the lockpicks I kept behind my teeth and close shut the world back up over my head again,
Spend a spell or two inside the prisons i built myself again,
Fall back into sunset habits again,
Rather than face the sunrise clear headed
Knowing that this
This is as good as i'm ever gonna feel.

I am sick of being cured because this is no antidote.
No one is afraid of the dark when the lights are on

There’s a morning chorus still singing the burden of nausea
And dropped  by the graceless hands of fate
Another Day breaks.
But for all the fragile homes I built myself in the name of safety
I have no time for walls right now.
I know I built a life of alcohol and I
But we strayed together for all the wrong reasons
And hedonism is not a coping mechanism
And I’ll always remember how this works
in yesterdays that escape me
and excuses that made me
With fearful nights where I was relapse ready
and days like today
Where my resolve is whiskey **** soft like a thrift store sweater
I tell myself tomorrow is just one more day to get to the end of.

Addiction is any port in a storm,
though i’m weighed down by the seas I swallow to keep me steady
You can’t call call me three sheets to the wind anymore
cos i’m tying hope to anchors
Onto these glass kept ships that I used to sink myself in.
There are no answers in a bottle no matter how often you ask it
And i'll keep asking.
Hold me like a funeral
Cos i am not strong.
Hold me like your breath,
Cos technically theres a lifetime supply of it
Now matter how deep you go.

I am 100 years of hurricanes

I have fought avalanches and won

I am a monument to a disaster that never happened

I have been shaken in exact sync with whatever earthquake
You tell me I should not be walking with
You ask me how I survived this well who the **** said I did?

Am i as much a symptom of the world as I am sick of it?
I never figured out the trick behind this
I never knew what proof I had of this
Just knew that it was always too much too often for too long.
Just knew that it was always too much too often for too long.
Just knew that one way or another this will be the death of me.

I know where this journey takes me, and what it takes from me
So when asked for directions I say:
“To hell with us there is no us!
No you and I to talk of.
You were only ever a wrong road
and I am headed due north of this rock bottom.”

I'll be the tornado if you can find my ruby red shoes to be twelve stepping in.
This close to failure I wear seven league boots
And I know the exact route of just a few moments longer.

I’ll let the seasons decide this one
(Let them change me like I  didnt)
Keep whiskey and knives away from me;
I got this achilles throat from trying to swallow the styx.

And I'm not scared of mortality’s uncertainty any more;
My Haros hand is sure.
Though I didnt have any doubts drunk
I'm sure
I was never Sam when i wasn't sober.