Life got too hard,
and he just gave up
he tipped his ***** bottle
swirled into his cup.

No ice please I hate 34 degrees
hurts my teeth they start to chatter
then I start shaking my knees.

This bars my Christmas
my birthday,
my new years, no ones here
its my bar at my house
I sleep in my sleeping bag full of
beer cotton mouth.

The mice even left.

Without that molecule
I couldn’t snore a wink
the sheep in my dreams are drunk
they stumble fences and pant bleats

They guilt me to sleep
not calm soothe or meek
they taunt me of loss of love
and a family that cant speak

The roaches are gone
they stopped playing cards
I watched them wall glide
and asked them to stay in my floor

Then the roache left too.

It seems cant do much
drunk klutz falling over tables
maybe my liver loves me
maybe that’s stable.

I go shopping for droppings
for things that I need
if I loved myself a bit
maybe I'd do speed.
End it quicker.

The cirrhosis is my friend
he gives me gifts
cramps in the morning
and blood in my ****.

I think if my liver were the garbage man.
He'd bring me good news
but I think liver got mad,
downed the last of the *****.

My liver left too.

Now I'm a maggot bag stinking up the place...No one knows.
Who knows.

There lived a man in Shady Hills,
sits home all day, popping pills.
Morning, noon and night,
not any real food in sight.
Drinks water from the tap,
too wired to take a nap.
Percocets all **** day,
Vicodin is the only way.
Xanax in the night time,
****** he buys for a dime.
Oxycontin, he keeps hidden,
his hiding spot is forbidden.
Takes Abilify for his mood swings,
taking Amphetamines gives him wings.
More skinny than a rail,
in life he sure did fail.
Ecstasy, he keeps under lock and key,
he doesn't give away any pills for free.
At thirty he ended up with cirrhosis of the liver,
he didn't care about his new founded quiver.
Popped pills til his death,
at least he never smoked ****.
Died at the age of thirty two,
in his stomach was pill stew.
Just another sad lost soul,
popping pills will someday take a toll.

In an instant, I’m back in that two-bedroom
apartment on Monte Park Ave, in old town Fair Oaks. Where family photos and live plants cluttered the already small space. It was a Monday night, February 13,2012, the day before Valentines Day, doing a routine visit to see my mama. The woman, who had birthed and loved me, as best as she could, with the tools life had equipped her with. This visit was different I could sense it. The moment I stepped foot onto that beige carpet and looked into her sunken green eyes. The cancer, cirrhosis and hepatitis C that had eaten at her liver the last two and a half years was coming to an end. My mother was a hardened woman, hardened by life. Crimes that had been committed against her and crimes she’d committed against herself continually ate at her. She was still able to shower an immense, unconditional love on us kids; in the days she was able to function, without the inevitable numbing. Those days didn’t last long, until she’d check out again.
As an adult the childhood ghosts of her past, were relived through her. So much to the point she allowed the destruction and pain to take ahold of her thoughts and entire being. The darkened corners of her life would begin to suffocate her.
As kids we’d often wake to her drunken blackouts after the town bars closed. She’d destroy the furniture in my home, demolishing anything within arms reach. Police would come often, we would hide…fearful…always fearful. She would sober up and check herself into rehab and do well for a while. We always hoped it would just one day end and she would be okay. The cycle just seemed to continue, for years, then decades. We would see fragments of her amazing personality, deep gentle heart and willingness to love hard and stay tough. Then it would be wiped away and knocked out of her when she’d run. Slowly, we lost pieces of her throughout the years.
My mom came to know a relationship with God in the last years of her life. I could sense a peace within her, but it was plain to see, she still carried regrets. Alcohol and drugs were her numbing medicine of choice to drown out the pain of the past. Even in her last days, she’d attempt to drink away the pain. I’d hold her feeble hands, sitting on her couch and pray with her. Pray for peace to finally consume her mind. Ever since I was a child, I had always felt like her mother. I wanted to save her, protect her, help her to see her worth in God.

It was just three months prior to her diagnosis, and I had found her cold and almost lifeless on her apartment floor. She had attempted suicide. It was late at night. I hadn’t heard from her in two days. I had that motherly gut wrenching feeling that something wasn’t right. Remembering the key I had to her apartment, I rushed out the door in only a bathrobe to check on her. I unlocked her front door; my heart hit the ground as I carefully turned the living room corner, to see her body, still, by the foot of her bed. In a numb haze, I checked her pulse and lifting her off the floor, I wailed and called on the name of Jesus, Jehovah Rapha – the God who heals, El – Shaddai – an almighty God. Peace flooded the room as I claimed this womans broken life and soul in his name. I laid her on her bed and held her, waiting for the ambulance to come. Those next four days in the hospital were torturous. As her body fought to rid itself of the toxins she’d consumed in an attempt to end the misery. Handcuffed to the hospital bed, I watched her sweat, cry and wail. I would pray. He’s here. He’s the healer. Even in that state God loved my mother, she was his child, even when she was most unlovable, he held her.

It is now, less than three years later, that I am watching her life slowly drain.
I can distinctly remember the aroma that I woke to, on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012. Having slept a horrid nights sleep, on my mothers’ living room floor the night before. I knew the end was near.
I would wake hourly to check on her, while she was asleep on her couch. Normally, she would take her meds every three hours. This night, she had slept more than ten straight hours. Drenched in sweat, she awoke. She called to me to help her to the bathroom. Her husband and I each held her arms and pulled her to her feet. Halfway to standing she began to hemorrhage blood. Gallons, literally gallons of blood spilled out of her. Her husband began to scream. We were never prepared for this. Never was hemorrhaging mentioned in all of the hospice nurse and doctors visits. Unable to call 911 due to the DNR (do not resuscitate) forms my mom signed. We slowly walked her to the bathroom. Blood poured out of her body in what seemed to be the longest walk ever, leaving a trail of what was left of her life down that hallway.
Expecting her to collapse, doing my doggone best to act calm as her husband cried and screamed frantically. We laid towels over the toilet and sat her down hoping to stop the hemorrhaging and call the hospice nurses to come to her home. Once I let go of the grip I had on my moms arm, I grabbed Drews face and ordered him to breathe and quit screaming. My mother sat, silent, she looked up at us, our hands and feet covered in blood, both frantically searching for the nurses numbers in our cell phones in a shaky mess. She quietly said, “please calm down”. I wrapped my arms around her, sitting there looking faint, expecting for her to hit the floor at any moment.
No child should ever have to see their mother bleed to death. I felt as though I was in a dream. Everything was hazy. Yet, God was there. I could only rely on his strength to keep me calm, to handle the situation, as Drew lost his mind and my mom was quickly losing life.
This couldn’t possibly be the end, I said to myself. Gently lifting her to her feet, we guided her down the remainder of the hall, to her bedroom; to the hospital bed she would spend her remaining days on. I stripped my mom of her blood-drenched clothing. Bathed and diapered her, as she had to me for many years as an infant. Those last days felt like an eternity. Going home to shower and take a short break from the death unfolding in front of my eyes, I was fearful she would slip away in my one-hour absence. I went to the store to buy my momma the last bouquet of roses I would ever give to her. I lit the candle next to her flowers. I played music, read and sang to her in those last hours. Massaged her hands and feet with lotion, as I’m sure she did to me as a baby. I prayed for her and over her. Watched her husbands’ heart break into a billion pieces, as he would walk around their apartment and cry. Still then, God was there.

“ With all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love”.
Ephesians 4:2

Amidst the pain, the known regrets, fear and sadness, he’s the comforter. Not understanding why my eyes and heart had to burned with such tragic memories in watching her suffer, Gods peace lied there and he strengthens when we have none.

“ I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me”.
Phillipians 4:13

That final night, I had known. Sitting in the living room with one of my dearest friends Shawna and Drew,
I stood up “ we need to go check on her “ I said, as I stepped in her room, she was struggling to take her last breaths. Her husband ran to the far side of the bed and held onto her, wailing. I grabbed her hand and my friend grabbed mine.
She was fighting to breathe, her arms flailing.
I told her it was ok to go. To finally let go.
I fought to speak those words to her and to make them sound believable. Wishing she could just climb up off of that bed, healthy and smiling and hold me.
When she took her last breath. I watched her body lose its vibrancy. Shaken and strangled with anxiety, I threw up on the floor next to her bed. Having known the struggles and regrets this precious woman bore in her lifetime…and how at that moment…she’d have given anything to redo it.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12

Do I know if my mother truly believed an all-consuming savior that died for us wholly loved her?
I don’t.
Do I have complete contentment that she passed with all the peace that God intended for us to have?
I don’t.

Which has led me to this. When the fateful day of my existence here on earth, ceases to watch another sunrise…what will my precious babies have to say of me?
I have nurtured every one of them; kissed chubby piggy toes and sang silly songs.
I, like many, have made heart-wrenching mistakes despite knowing Gods love for me.
All in an attempt to fill a God shaped whole in my heart.

“Those who rest in the shelter of the most high will find rest in the shadow of the almighty.”
Psalm 91:1

What will my beautiful daughters and handsome son be able to reflect upon, after my passing?
Perhaps this was his plan after all.

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes”
Psalm 119:71

He is in fact the author.

“O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off”
Psalm 139:1-2

Every intricate detail of my life, from the gory to treacherous to beautiful and serene was written.
God gives first, second, third, fourth, fifth , sixth and beyond chances, just waiting for me to see who I am…in him.
In this short 30 years of my life, I’ve fallen short.
What matters, is the here, the now and the tomorrow.
Can I actually attain all of the attributes of the woman in Proverbs 31?

“Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also praiseth her”
Proverbs 31:28

Will my children be able to say this of me?
Will my sleepy eyed babies awake to drunken rages, as I did as a child…or a woman on her knees in prayer at suns rising?
I will strive daily, hourly, minute by minute to fight back the rising of my flesh, any hateful words that might ******* and distractions from what life is really created for…all on my knees before a God whose love consumes.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

My great-grandmother lived in a time when if you sang too loudly in a public place
Such as on the bus
With no audible music anyone else could hear
You were thrown away
Reported by the sanest of citizens
Locked away in the mental ward of Bellevue Asylum
By your own family

She was an alcoholic
Well, she was Italian
As was that whole part of my family
And Italians like wine
And she liked her wine
Maybe a little bit too much
My grandfather said that by six o'clock
Everyone in the house was screaming
Throwing things
Alcohol-tinged, infant-like fits
The lot of them
Drunk
Every night of the year

But my great-grandmother
She was the only one who carried her drink
In a little metal flask
Tucked in her ragged coat
Took it with her on the bus
On the way to work at a hotel
Where people with enough money
To boost the world's economy
Slept, ate and yelled at her
For forgetting to put a mint on their pillow once
But she just hummed away
Took the flack with a smile
Sipped her poison
And rode the bus back to work
The next day
Drunk
Singing
La Donna e' Mobile

One day though
Her brothers caught up to her
As she was boarding that bus
She was singing again
And smiled
Asked them what they were doing there
And they looked at her
Smiled
And smacked her

They threw her in their car
And took her to Bellvue
In 1947
When the idea of mental health
Was shrouded in ignorance
And scrutiny
And the word "medicine"
Meant electric-shocks to the brain
Submerging in below freezing
Ice-tanks
And
Fiddling around
In people's brains
Through their eye-sockets
With screwdrivers
"Lobotomies"

My grandfather was born in 1945
He was only two when they took his mother away
And only three
When they told him she died
Rotting in the asylum
Experiments done to her
That my family will never know the nature of
Never know how much pain
She ****** up
Never know if the cause of death
Was actually "cirrhosis of the liver"
Or
An officially administered
Botched
Brain-****

The car window rolls down
Scraping off the condensation that hugs softly
Onto the gossamer surface as it exudes from existence
Welcoming a life on exhibit
Letting in the worlds expectations
A caustic compound of sleet and breeze
This incomplete paper city glows green with envy
Rotting from the inside with cirrhosis and disease
Binary choices yet palindromic
Twisting towards a misnomer of free will.

A cigarette **** let loose
As it arcs towards infinity
Exhaling a sigh from inside my vice
Laced with addiction
Leaving me like flies from ****
Rain beating off our rusted exterior
Oil stripped paint oozing into the street
The suspension rocks to one side
As I unfurl my jacket
and strike a match off my forearm
I look up at the unknowing residents of this metropolis
Each light representing my social dissonance.

My hands stir nervously underneath my coat
As I begin the entrance to exit
Slowly draping my legs from comfort to the sketches of snow
Pushing myself between steel like I wasn't in agony
An abstract conceptulisation of progress
A smooth turbulence smashes against my scalp
Like a metal rod boring into my uncertainty
I was swimming in the same pool as the ****
That populated these furrowed streets in excess
The dead had all the answers
And the living had too many questions.

Something went off in my head
My brain exploded with colours ranging from grey to ****-stained
Dripping onto my shoes with disgust
There was a hole in every pub from here to god knows
Drinking myself into oblivion and waking into this night terror
Rapid eye movements and the slurred decadence of my life on replay
Minds on fire and burrowed into ****** exaltations
But now it's gone
An image in the trees, now splattered across pavements
I make my home where I dream
Starving my journey of canonical basics.

It was all plastic
As I make my way up the emergency exit
Abounding up the stairs with wandering steps
Falling deeper into the past
Granite mirrors, mincing with guilt
Exposures, taped together backwards and inside out
My life is an alibi for reality
Dipped in *******, surfing on opiates
I was sick
Too ill to cope with enlightenment
Too stupid to hate myself.

I'll make my home where I dream
In hotel beds and in cars
On the roadside and in pity
Food crumbled on blankets
Lifestyle in overkill
In hope that travelers see
I make my home where I please.

Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile**

July 4th and all is Hell.
Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble
with flame-loined kids in designer jeans
looking for people to **** or razor.
A madman covered with running sores
is on the street corner singing:
O beautiful for spacious skies…
This landscape is far too convenient
to be either real or metaphor.
In an alley behind a 7-11
a Black **** dressed in Harris tweed
preaches fidelity to two pimply ******
whose skin is white though they aren’t quite.
And crosstown in the sane precincts
of Brown University where I added rage
to Cliff Notes and got two degrees
bearded scientists are stringing words
outside the language inside the guts of atoms
and I don’t know why I’ve come back to visit.

O Uncle Adrian! I’m in the reservation of my mind.
Chicken bones in a cardboard casket
meditate upon the linoleum floor.
Outside my flophouse door stewed
and sinister winos snore in a tragic chorus.

The snowstorm t.v. in the lobby’s their mother.
Outside my window on the jumper’s ledge
ice wraiths shiver and coat my last cans of Bud
though this is summer I don’t know why or where
the souls of Indian sinners fly.
Uncle Adrian, you died last week—cirrhosis.
I still have the photo of you in your Lovelock
letterman’s jacket—two white girls on your arms—
first team All-State halfback in ’45, ’46.

But nothing is static. I am in the reservation of
my mind. Embarrassed moths unravel my shorts
thread by thread asserting insectival lust.
I’m a naked locoweed in a city scene.
What are my options? Why am I back in this city?
When I sing of the American night my lungs billow
Camels astride hacking appeals for cessation.
My mother’s zippo inscribed: “Stewart Indian School—1941”
explodes in my hand in elegy to Dresden Antietam
and Wounded Knee and finally I have come to see
this mad *** nation is dying.
Our ancestors’ murderer is finally dying and I guess
I should be happy and dance with the spirit or project
my regret to my long-lost high school honey
but history has carried me to a place
where she has a daughter older than we were
when we first shared flesh.

She is the one who could not marry me
because of the dark-skin ways in my blood.
Love like that needs no elegy but because
of the baked-***** possibility of the flame lakes of Hell
I will give one last supper and sacrament
to the dying beast of need disguised as love
on deathrow inside my ribcage.
I have not forgotten the years of midnight hunger
when I could see how the past had guided me
and I cried and held the pillow, muddled
in the melodrama of the quite immature
but anyway, Uncle Adrian…
Here I am in the reservation of my mind
and silence settles forever
the vacancy of this cheap city room.
In the wine darkness my cigarette coal
tints my face with Geronimo’s rage
and I’m in the dry hills with a Winchester
waiting to shoot the lean, learned fools
who taught me to live-think in English.

Uncle Adrian…
to make a long night story short,
you promised to give me your Oldsmobile in 1962.
How come you didn’t?
I could have had some really good times in high school.

he eschewed the label,
“Native American,” for he was *****,
and he wasn't ashamed he liked his spirits
dollar wine worked as well

cirrhosis was a family trait
though he didn't learn the word until an army doc
admonished him, saying he would earn the curse
by 45, if he kept it up

and he did, even more after that crazy
Asian war, where he killed a half dozen men
they called yellow, though to Walter, they looked
to be his emaciated brown cousins

he could stand tall, straight
with a pint of rot gut in him, burning
his belly, but not causing his head to spin
though it helped him block them out:

those he did not know; those he
slaughtered like lambs with the gun they issued him;
those who inhabited a space just behind his eyes
whenever they closed, night or day

someone found him, in his pickup bed
dead from exposure, from too many years
on the bottle, too many dreams he tried to drown
and too many ghosts to haunt his nights

Gallup, New Mexico, 1999

The best of dying is
nil by mouth
morphine the last delirium then
laid out to rest,
he ain't the big hitter  now.
Stella the shirtless got meaner
down by Cirrhosis avenue.
King's for the Christmas duration
profaning in Erse
we all thought he was an Englishman.
The leaking mercury fillings
or Toxoplasmosis Cat dishes
should have made him more paranoiac,
the statute of a Man
unprotected.

First the diagnosis
Then the prognosis
Indeed it is cirrhosis

Alongside the cancer
Is the answer
They will no longer be a dancer

First comes shock
At no longer being a chip off the old block
Wanting to throw a rock

It just can’t be they are too young
Why has it spread to the lung
Will these be the last words rung

I want to ring its neck
But we need all hands on deck
So emotions are kept in check

Then sadness comes along
Oh this is so wrong
They want us to be strong

All leading to depression
And many a session
Even a confession

Can’t they be given another chance
Couldn’t there be a different circumstance
But in the end we all end up at acceptance

The five stages of grief
In a brief
Poem is my belief

Andreas Simic ©

My blood boils over
Your four leaf clover
Is running out of luck
Don't push it, I'm at the brink
I hear it, the way you think

That the words you say
Will stay between my ears
And not evaporate  
Like the promises they never were
Too late, too late

My reasoning compromised
My senses desensitized
My humanity digitized
Into steps of despair,
hate and fury, lay bare

I hear the words come out
But I don't listen
My tongue has no master
Sly as a *****,
They tumble out faster

Roll over our bonds
Like lava over rivers
Like alcohol through livers
This is our cirrhosis
Our relationship's psychosis

Hardened like stone
Over castles of glass
And as the words stop
I realise they're crass
Alas, an impasse!

I have lost your trust
To an unjust jury
Like the Radium that murdered
the Lady Curie  
All love fissioned  
Because of my fury

I'm trying to find the way

But I don't know where to go,

Sometimes I think I found it

But how would I know?

I wish to see a sign

To lead me all the way,

Or a shepherd to pull me

When I go astray.

I know God is with me

But am I with Him?

How do I know

If I fell off the limb?

I want to walk so firm

But I get so confused,

All of life's trials & consequences

Have me deeply bruised.

I long to find my peace

I look forward to my dreams,

But how would I know

Where my path leads?

Oh God please clear my way

And let me see the light,

Reveal to me my weapons

And show me how to fight.

I need your mighty strength

To possess my emotions,

I give you all my worship

prayer and devotion....

I wrote this poem when I lost my brother Hector to Cirrhosis in the liver. Do to his heavy drinking. I lost him and my sister Maria in the same month...same year...November 1999.

I sit my backpack down on the university bathroom floor with a clink.
I pull my pants down so I blend in to the other collection of feet below the stall walls.
Balancing the large glass bottle between my thighs --
I pick up the unwieldy weight and strangle its neck - I lip it.
I pull in *****, no chaser, like the rappers do.
Throat-clenching cold, metallic liquid,

I try not to retch.
Humming represses the gag reflex.

My best friend asks me why my breath smells like alcohol.
It’s 12:30 on a Tuesday and I’m chewing gum.

I stumble home for miles after a party on the cuff of dark roadway with shooting star cars bulleting by.
I just want my bed.
I violently stick my ***** finger nail down my throat.
I feel much better.

A girl asks me what I was reading at a coffee shop.
I’m too hungover to keep a conversation going.

I fall asleep to the view of a crumbling mountain of beer cans beside my bed.

I take shots before having to make a phone call.

***** looks like water until you shake it.

A nerve pinching, vertebrae crushing chronic back pain sets in.
I drink to numb the pain.

Hidden bottles and cans lay under my my bed in my house back home in Saint Louis.
My dad pulls me aside and timidly tells me I have a weird, dead, look on my face at a family party.

A poem that doesn’t make sense when I read it in the morning.
Haywire words that might have been beautiful.

A google search.
Has anyone died from cirrhosis at the age of 20?

A body-wide rash that was the result of 1.75 liters of ***** over the course of a weekend.
The toxins seep from my pores.

The rest of the lines are whited out.

If you keep doing what you’re going
And you know you’re gonna die
Is it still suicide?

I don’t think I’ll ever be ready
For the day they call you home.
But you warn me you’ll be leaving
Eventually if not soon.

Is it selfish to try and stop you?
Try and make you face the things you chase away?
I’ll be here with you till the end
Regardless of when that comes

Another year, another resolution
Dry out January
That was a tough day
Change of job, new challenge
The scalpel cut deeply through the chest cavity
Maybe the year to find love, maybe
So many choices, so many
The scalpel cut deep, too late
The patient was lost
A long break
Different country, new start
The drink would help the choice
So steady as the bottle emptied
The scalpel cut deep, advanced signs of liver cirrhosis
The surgeon assisting was in awe at the dexterity of the liver being removed
The signs were staring back at him
The warning stark
He pondered it over a bottle of chivas
The operation would last ten hours
The hospital was lucky to have such a prestigious surgeon
The scalpel cut deep
Four hours in, the sweating and trembling began
The vessels were clamped off
The bathroom break soothed as the whisky hit home
The operation continued
The  drink breaks also
Finally finished he excused himself and left
The trip home left him physically shaking
The whisky hit home
Calm now, he went through the operation in his head
The patient was responding, the team were pleased
Something was gnawing away at him
He just couldn’t pinpoint what it was
The whisky had done its job
He was calm
It had been a long day
The pager sounding brought him round
The nagging doubt as he phoned the hospital
The patient wasn’t responding
The patient, the patient, always the patient
The clamps, he couldn’t remember
Did he remove them
He started to shake
The whisky calmed him
The pager sounded
The bottle stared back at him
Time for a change
A new challenge
A long break
The decision was made
He would drink to that.

By: Cedric McClester

We’ve become a nation
That refuses to think
They pass us poisoned Kool Aid
And we can’t wait to drink
We’re gullible enough
To go for the hoodwink
If there’s a ***** in our armor
It’s that we’re missing a vital link

Promise them anything
But they’re gonna get Arpege
Just like that old
Perfume commercial says
We’ve been sold a dream
By those running for prez
Tell me who out there
Right now could use a Pez

No one ever asks
How are they gonna deliver
Before they buy that bridge
Over the Hudson River
Some say they’re flexible
Do they mean Indian giver
Or maybe they just suffer from
Cirrhosis of the liver

Have we become so desperate
That we’ll go for anything
No matter what concoction
Snake oil salesmen bring
One wants to be the president
The other probably king
But we’ll know bye and bye
Once the fat lady gets to sing




Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2016.  All rights reserved.

i often wonder how i will die. skin cancer.
heart complications. liver cirrhosis. old age.
undetermined cause. ******. accidental overdose.
i daydream that it will come soon. my future
without you feels like a false floor. i'm waiting for you
to appear with white gloves, wand in hand, to whisk
me away. to climb into our coffins side by side, a twisted
amusement park ride. ****** cotton candy and jagged fun
house mirrors. being alone is stuffy weight. despite the added
space, my chest is tense and eyes are bugged. your hands,
your voice, your warmth would set me free.

You defy belief
Thanks dear
I mean, seven in the morning and you’re sober
Pub went on fire, early night
Someday you will die a lonely man
My God, that philosophy degree has done you good
Why, because i state the obvious
Exactly, we’re all going to die someday
Not from liver cirrhosis
No, you’ll go from nagging-itis
Always the comic
Being married to you dear, brings out the best in me
Do you ever wonder why i left
Have you left
Yes, i’m now happy with Jeff
Philosophy again, seven in the morning, you passing by
I was concerned about you
Jeff’s boring the pants off you
No he isn't, he’s my rock
Fancy a quickie
Certainly not
C’mon he’s a boring history teacher
Jeff’s a lecturer
It’s written all over your face, frustration my dear
Our *** life is great
*** to the Boer war, riveting
Jeff is tuned into me
Battle of Britain music, is that oral to Jeff
Fucken hate you
I see that look in your eyes
Hate you
You want me
Shut up, lets go
Will you be passing by again anytime soon
Not if i can help it
You sure, i don’t mind helping out
Going for a romantic weekend with Jeff
See you Monday then
Only if i'm passing by

You defy belief
Thanks dear
I mean, seven in the morning and you’re sober
Pub went on fire, early night
Someday you will die a lonely man
My God, that philosophy degree has done you good
Why, because i state the obvious
Exactly, we’re all going to die someday
Not from liver cirrhosis
No, you’ll go from nagging-itis
Always the comic
Being married to you dear, brings out the best in me
Do you ever wonder why i left
Have you left
Yes, i’m now happy with Jeff
Philosophy again, seven in the morning, you passing by
I was concerned about you
Jeff’s boring the pants off you
No he isn't, he’s my rock
Fancy a quickie
Certainly not
C’mon he’s a boring history teacher
Jeff’s a lecturer
It’s written all over your face, frustration my dear
Our *** life is great
*** to the Boer war, riveting
Jeff is tuned into me
Battle of Britain music, is that oral to Jeff
Fucken hate you
I see that look in your eyes
Hate you
You want me
Shut up, lets go
Will you be passing by again anytime soon
Not if i can help it
You sure, i don’t mind helping out
Going for a romantic weekend with Jeff
See you Monday then
Only if i'm passing by

The lost seas of writhing souls
Deep and the darkness, bucolic peasantry carrying a basin of mud
Protesting for better wages, in the bruised bulls of Wall Street
Seeking pursuit of happiness, and finding the answer
With each proceeding need and the greed just stops being a word
Mirrors and global skyscrapers, objects, all forecasted
We know what we will build for the future
A future of objectivism, and plants with books overlooking New York streets
Dreaming of better living in extravagant Manhattan
Teaching others about the poetic license, how you can lie
Blues and *****, and the breaths of the cold morsels
Murky hills, carrying pitchforks in boreal forests
Barking and biting, these are now chilly pine peaks
The heart seeks what it seeks, and omniscience and ubiquitous Gods
Like modern infrastructure, and precarious progress for the army recruit
There are plenary structures and assemblies of kitsch Kilimanjaro, replicas of mountains and wax models
Romancing each stone, and feelings of someone you once loved
You thank heaven, that she walked into the right bar
Sometimes, you hope she walks into the wrong seat and meets you
Greets you at times, as an alarm for the correct time
Tresses of eve-teasers lay ******* on great cars, some of them even make haste with purloined convertibles
Purring cats walk through Plainfield and Mclaren streets, foraging for serendipity
You'll be glad that heaven brought you to the right bar, to tell you are the right desire
In this sea of lost souls, thinking they are struggling
But, actually, they are tied to the confabulating and changing climate
Blaring horns of the bungholes and dungeons of bald men spot the madness from afar from the humble abode
All of them dying peptic ulcers, cirrhosis and drinking themselves to illness
Indemnified by their art, art is the way to explain these insecurities and voids of despair, we are a civilized bunch, right?

Closer to the transplant
Did all the test for California
Now going to take more exams in Arizona
Waiting for a liver could take weeks possibly months
Almost a year ago it started
A doctor appointment for a check up
Finding out with high enzyme levels
Being diagnosed with cirrhosis
A phone call from a doctor with no bed side manners
You're sick we need to figure out
What wrong with you
You have cirrhosis or cancer
Thankful it was cirrhosis over cancer
The less of two evils trying to get healthy

Wherever you hear about a drinking
problem
you expect the man to be
violent and ****** and turn abusive
and destructive

well
it wasn’t the case with him

There was a drinking problem there
for sure
but all it cursed him with
was sleep and sometimes
verses

He’d start writing after
drinking

But he was a kind man and a great
lover
and his wife had a hard time
convincing her family and friends
and neighbors
that a man who has a separate trashcan
only for bottles and beer cans
is not a man who strikes his wife,
not even with words

Well, none of
them read his poetry

and by the time he died of
cirrhosis it was
too late

You can’t scold a dead man for
having written thousands upon thousands
of pages of
splatter-punk gore and abuse fantasies
involving his wife
her family
her friends
neighbors
and everyone he knew, including minors

I sat by an ailing parent
amid the mingled echoes
of agonising angst
watching the goings-on.

A withered man lay wailing
of a gangrenous leg
demanding doctor's attention
praying for the Lord's mercy.

Next to him
a lean, grim, gaunt man
too tall for the ward-bed---
liver cirrhosis
was his diagnosis.

In the corner far off
sat a mother in vigil
over her son in teens---
his neurosis
the aftermath of a car mishap.

A charred young lady
on a stretcher brought
specialists and sisters rushing
machines and medicaments.
Some seconds of struggle
liberate the lady
from human *******.

The sisters shout
"  Remove  the body "!
Specialists turn to depart.
Everyone in the Ward
goes about lackadaisical
sans a sigh of emotion
sans a streak of affection.