You fool no one but yourself
  with ***** and peppermints.
  You slur words and stumble.
  I will love you always.
  You're the funniest man I
  will ever know and kindest
  and fiercely loyal to a fault.
  You're broken and know it.
  You don't know how to fix it.
  I'll keep your broken as best
  I can. We'll live in a crooked
  house on a crooked street with
  less and less. Our world is
  small. It shrinks often as our
  friends and family drink into
  their early graves as sure as
  you will or give up on us as
  too broke to bother with.

I'm frantically looking for my *****.
  It's hiding behind my chair like a cat.
  Like old lovers we feel comfort again.
  Don't tease me like that. I need you.

I'm an altar boy raised by nuns
trying to dance on the wild side with
guilt my constant companion. I bury my
conscience under absinthe and *******.
I wake naked and bewildered among people
searching for clothes caught in piles
never to be found again. We cover our
shame with anything we can and slither
out the door in splendid wonder at what
we dared do in such a strict world. We
are strangers who will meet again in
tomorrow's ****** of our own creation.

My liver is leaking.
   My heart escaped prison.
   I've never felt more alive.
   I'm in the combat zone where
   ****** sell love and queens
   give love away for a song.

I stand naked in a strange light
in my bathroom in the mirror
looking 35 but I'm 79 so what
magic does a young lover cast?
She thinks I'm moon and sun.
At death's door I've just begun.

Church bells are mute this time.
Carols are quiet in a silent night.
Tree lights are dim and children
laugh without mirth. It's a funeral.
Christ was stillborn to a ****** and
carpenter in a Holiday Inn Express.
Return all the toys and ***** the candles
and pour the eggnog down the drain.
We might as well burn the churches
and sell the Vatican holdings to feed
the world's starving and clothe the
naked and cure the sick and all of that.

I reach into my ice bucket.
I feel like the Titanic ruined
as I cover the bergs with wine
and crash into my destiny again.