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I've withdrawn from the sun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.

When I die, dear Mother
don't give my body away
to science.

I'd rather have it given away to poetry.

I want people to cut me open
and observe
how my bones were riddled with
melancholic verses of joyful pasts.

They have to see
the scarlet of my blood was the hue
I stole from the sunsets of
wishful thoughts.

Dear Mother,
give my body away
to the art of writing:
for they have to look past
everything they have ever learned.

They must know
of how much I loved and I lost,
and how that made the twine of my ribs
a story to tell.

It's a lot of work
Having to drag myself up here
Before slicing you off of me,
Piece by piece,
Tossing the already-rotting morsels
To the raptors
Lurking from the crags,
Anticipating
With rapt hunger.

Those poor birds
Having to settle for gristle,
Already spoiled by rancor and impermanence,
I hope they pardon me
Like how I'm starting to forgive you --
With resignation
Accepting
That it was all you had to offer
In your desolation and brokenness.
And maybe I should have known better
That you didn't know better
Than to sear your conscience,
That betrayal was all you knew.

The trek back down
Ought to be easy.
How can it not be
When I am divested
Of these memories staining me --
Of us flashing sickly sweet grins at each other
Breathing each other in
Serenaded by the music of our souls,
Each asomatous snapshot
Titanic in weight.

I'm surprised
The winds haven't carried me off by now.

I finally know why I smoke.
For six years I have ****** tar
and I used to think
I wanted to **** myself
Just very slowly.
A painful, drawn out death that I,
indeed, deserve.
Now, I think, I symbolically
am setting fire to the feelings I have
Every day
And let the ash
fall to ground
while I walk away
feeling better.

Heal thyself poet
let words be your salve
let loose your longing
set free your sadness

Let them run wildly
over salt-damp parchment
Let them wail at the moon
and weep silently in corners

Throw them to the wolves
that your pain may sustain them
For it has nourished you
long enough

Let it all go.
Let it wrench from your soul
with glorious abandon
Let it scream from your lungs
Let it bleed through your skin

It matters not that you are broken,
that your scattered pieces hold no form
Only that you are here.

So write, dear poet.
Heal thyself.

They called me an iconoclast
Blessed
With a templar-like fervor,
Fueled by my devotion
To the intangible potentate, Logic --
Omnipresent, omnipotent.

But how could I be?
Not with Katarina and Bianca
Still resting in grottoes.
Not when I still stop by now and then,
Meandering in from my countless excursions,
Traipsing about in my mind,
To leave a few trinkets
And light some candles
And maybe a murmured prayer.

Those snapshots of memory
Revisiting me on rare occasions now,
But not a moment of recollection goes by
Without remembering
Katarina
Writhing beneath my grip,
Her slender fingers entwined with mine,
Or Bianca
Enclosing me in her warmth,
Her gnarled hands reeking of cigarettes.
Their I love yous, I like yous,
Whispers and kisses,
All branded on my skin.

No, sir.

Label me not
As one,
Not when I still keep their memories
On a pedestal,
Not when I still heave sighs
Of longing and fondness
To herald in nostalgia
And its hangers on,
Regret and despair,
However blasphemous.

An iconoclast I am not.
Anything but.
Revile me
For exalting heretics.

I deserve the rack and the stake
For becoming
Just as much a heretic
As the ones I was tasked to condemn.