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.

If I went to a professional they'd probably say it started when I was younger
Which begs the question why it didn't affect my older brother

Maybe it's just the way my brain is wired
I'm just so ******* sick and tired
Of being so **** sick and tired
Why am I always so ******* tired?

I just go through the motions
All the days just blend together
The only thing keeping me going
Is the hopes that this won't last forever

I can say that I care about a few things
But it'd be only to myself that I feed lies
There's a lot I need to get off my chest
But it's hard when I have to make it rhyme

I don't consider myself a poet
More of an alocoholic with a pen
I get myself into a drunken haze
And spill all the thoughts in my head

You're probably wondering where this is going
And I can't say that I have the answer
I kind of just type away
Until I start to feel a little better.

I always thought I knew what cologne smelled like.
It was harsh and made my eyes water and nose burn.
All I knew is that my dad wore it religiously.
I always thought my dad wore cologne.
I was ten years old when I learned what whiskey smelt like.

I was sixteen years old when I took my first sip of whiskey.
It was weak, mixed with diet coke, but it still left my throat burning.
I never liked the taste, but when I brought the cup to my nose and smelt the bitterness and I saw the eyes of my father, I knew that the smell was so much worse.
It was that moment when I understood why people drank to forget.

That night I closed my eyes and I saw the black label of Jack Daniels Whiskey, I saw the long brown paper bags that my dad hid in the cupboards, I saw the coke cans littered around our trash can.

I was too young to understand, but with whiskey running through my own veins I connected each individual dot like each sign a constellation.

I set the cup down and winced.
My friends laughed, of course.
They didn’t know.
They’d never even guess.
They probably thought I was a lightweight, a girl who couldn’t even handle a sip of whiskey.
I smiled, too.

I don’t think I’ll ever drink whiskey again.

When my friends think about drinking they see parties, and wild nights, and crazy hangovers

And when I tell them I never plan on letting a sip of alcohol touch my lips, they're scandalized

Because they don't understand

How could they ever?

When I think of drinking, I think of my mom passed out underneath our Christmas tree

Or my dad swerving down side streets with the smell of whiskey wafting off of him like smoke from a campfire

I see my childhood that came crashing down in front of my eyes

I see something that they will never understand