Alcohol
It can stain your lips red
Or leave your mouth with a certain taste or smell
Alcohol
You used it to forget
It eased your numbness
A raging alcoholic
Darling, why are you screaming???
The alcohol was enough to change you
One minute your fists are clenching the steering wheel
Knuckles white
The next you are swerving
And listening to elevator music
You laugh hysterically as you toss empty bottles out of your window
A raging alcoholic
You send me texts late at night
And call me crying at 4 a.m.
You can't drink on an empty stomach
And you've got it down to a science when it comes to sobering up for football in the morning
Your eyes are this hazy red
I can't remember if it's from the alcohol or your allergies, because you haven't taken your medicine in three months
I saw you as a broken jigsaw puzzle
Just waiting to be pieced back together
And you looked so cold
So lifeless
Your body is ivory white
Your lips feel like Alaska biting down on my neck with frostbite
I miss when you used to be happy
Truly, utterly happy.
The radio in your car hums slowly as the lights of the freeway ignite your face
Your vision is more blurry
Than when the doctor asks you
One or two
Your father yells at you when you come in from coming in so late
I am sorry
Sometimes I forget that you are someone else's son and they worry about you
Speaking of parents
You aren't the only one to possess alcoholism
My mother
A woman in her fourties has been elongated to this deadly desire since she was a teenager
I don't have my license yet
But she always makes sure to have a ****** Mary when we are out to eat
I happen to think it's because of me
Maybe she can't stand my company.
She has to poison her blood stream to be able to sit still when it becomes silent
The pearls on her neck glisten like the haze of her eyes
She seems far away.
It was the alcohol that caused the break up of our family
A man who turned to god and farming is still married to a teenage partier.
Maybe this is why my father hid all of the wine glasses in the house.
Her son
Has also turned to this deadly conundrum
He used to drink over four times the legal limit
"I know how to hold my liquor"
He'd say under slurred tongues
He was a natural
Relied on drugs and alcohol to soothe his depression
He got pulled over when he was 16 for drunk driving
And my father picked him up with shaky hands
A dissapoinment, he thought
He fell down a flight of stairs in an abandoned building
Broke his nose and laid in a pool of water until his friends found him
A lesson learned, you'd assume
We all work on it differently
The sadness, that is.
I mean
I write
But my neighbors drink themselves to sleep
An accident waiting to happen
When they choke on their own *****
I don't want to plan all of these funerals
I love you
Give it up

In those apricot-tinged nirvana days,
cigar smoke filled the stuffy restaurant in which we ate.
At the table across from us sat a couple in their fourties,
Him, a toupee-wearing, finger-clicking car salesman,
and Her, the blonde in a tight dress,
glossy white mink and even glossier white stilettos.

She talked enthusiastically about the new eastern religions,
Groups that offered "clarity" and "spiritual guidance" to the dissatisfied Miami girls such as herself.

She said that she wanted a new way of life.
(Secretly, she wanted the young guru who'd promised it to her.)
Toupee protested:
"But honey, we ain't no slaves to the machine!"
The gold Casio watch on his wrist and the tacky pearls she sported said otherwise.

As I lay back and think about my life,
from my childhood to the end.

Like most kids we played our own way.
We made up our rules for the game of the day.

In our adolescent years 13 to 19 which is our puberty years.
We learn about life and what does it mean.

Then in our twenties is when we have fun.
We experiment with ***, drugs and love.

When we hit our thirties, life then begins.
We look for a wife, a job or  career .

The fourties then come, and then to some.
Life starts to change from fun and games.

When the fifties hit, it'***** and miss.
They try to have fun and sometimes it comes.

They then hit sixty, and it's now their time.
Time to slow down and have simple fun.

Now in their seventies, life starts to change.
Some get dementia, some go away.

Wow the eighties, life gets hard and help is needed.
Show them your love, their your family.

Then comes the nineties, there not much fun. We keep hope hospice in mind with love and god.

100 hits, someone made it. What a day, it's celebrated in every way.

My love was simple and pure,
we mixed well like tea and honey.
Finding him was an accident,
but loving him was not,
and there is not a missing moment to pass
that I don't remember him.
He rose to the top
and died falling.
And that is the end of our story.